New York Trip

By my own admission I work hard,train hard and when the chance comes along play hard,the latter doesn,t present it,s self too often so when this weekend came along and presented me w/ the chance of a New York double header The Cure at Radio City Music Hall Saturday nite and the MAC C,ships at Ichan Stadium Sunday morning I pulled out all the stops to make it happen.
Since this is a running blog I won,t go into too much detail re The Cure @ Radio City Music Hall,I will say they were AWESOME,having seen them on the second nite of this tour here in Philly on May 10th,that nite they played for close to three hours performed 35 songs,23 of which made up their set followed by 3 encores and a futher 12 songs I had an idea what to expect some six weeks later.
I got a 2hr 55 min gig,their set was 2 hrs long w/ 25 songs followed by three encores consisting of 10 songs w/ such a major back catalogue of material it,s always dangerous to go into any show saying I want to hear this this and this,w/ The Cure I always hope to hear three songs"Strange Day""Disintegration" and "A Forest"tonite I got"A Forest"the first song of their third encore,a song they didn,t sing here in Philly,on the subject of which of the 70 songs they sung here six weeks ago and this weekend in New York they only repeated 20 at both shows.
Traditionally The Cure tour every four years,it may take that long for me to recover from both shows on this tour!!!!!
Off of a short nites sleep roughly five hours it was up at 7.30am Sunday morning to get over to Randalls Island and Ichan Stadium,on a morning I sooooooooooooo needed a cup of coffee to jump start my engine I had the misfortune of getting quiet possibly the worst cup of coffee I,ve ever had the misfortune to try and drink,how bad was it? I poured 3/4s of it into a trash can b4 catching the bus from 125th and Lexington Ave to Ichan Stadium.
I arrived at Ichan at 8.20am Chuck was already there to run his 3,000m which was the second event on the schedule,the 800m wasn,t till later which gave me time to relax a little, say hello to the various Central Park Track Club runners I know from my numerous races in New York and also get reaquainted w/ GP.
W/out going into major detail GP and I have just been on diferent wave lenghts of late,the greatest compliament I can pay him is that I,m still using his workouts it remaims to be seen what our futures hold in terms of continuing to work together in the near future and or long term but for one morning it felt good to shoot the proverbial,warm up together and take each others splits{GP ran in the 1,500m,the winning time was 4.08 and I watched from the stand wondering what if I,d opted for the 1,500m today,would I,ve broken the sub 4.10 mark in that race?a question for another day}
The 800m finally got called,three heats,I opted against running in the Masters race as I felt it would,ve been detremental to both the field and myself to try and run a 2.03 against a field that at best might muster a 2.10 and I,m not trying to be arrogent when I say that,Mike Potter from CPTC wished me luck in the open race"do it for us masters runners"and another CPTC Masters runner thanked me for moving up to the open heat"I hear you,re a killer at 800m"he said"yeah I,m running 2.03 this season" I replied"I think 2.23 will win our heat" he responded.
I got seeded 8th of 9 in heat 2 w/ my 2.03 that should give you an idea of the level of opposition I had elected to take on,Chris Potter another CPTC runner I,ve had the privalige to race several times over the past 18 months also moved up from the Masters field.
Once again my reaction to the gun was good and I got a clear start,thankfully not a repeat of my last 800m race at Henderson I was able to position myself on the outside of lane one coming off the first turn and settled into my stride right away.
Third at the bell I made a point to look up at the clock on the scoreboard 59 seconds,for the third time this season I,ve gone thro the bell in 59 seconds,12 months ago that might,ve phased me,these days I don,t even blink.
Coming off the turn Chris Potter passed me I knew Chris had ran a 2.02 this season and at the start of the race I,d toyed w/ the idea of tracking Chris early on however I got such a good start to my race that notion bit the dust.The back straight at Ichan is tough,you don,t notice it on the opening lap but anything from 800m upwards you can,t help but feel the wind coming up off the Hudson River,I didn,t want to get boxed in on the rail so after Chris passed me I moved out to the outside of lane one in case somebody came up along side of me,passing 200m to go I moved by Chris to reclaim 3rd and watched the lead two runners trade places w/ each other,I felt I might catch one if not both of them,off the final turn I got caught by a CPTC runner and just b4 the finish line another runner just edged me,believe me I,m not happy that two guys caught me b4 the line but considering I,m almost 45 and they,re however young they are I can,t be too hard on myself.
5th in 2.02.45 a seasons best and my second fastest ever 800m,two weeks in a row I,ve turned in #2 performances on my all time list,job done,I ,d used NJ C,ships and MAC C,ships to post good seed times for Nationals and that,s what I got.
W/ another six week of training still to come I feel I,m in great shape for Nationals,I still have two low key meets to come at Plymouth Whitemarsh next week and the week after and that,ll probably be my lot for races prior to Spokane.
All in all a great weekend.