In remembrance at the starting area of the NYRR Run for the Parks 4 mile race. (c) Stacey Cooper

Here’s a quick recap of my connection to the Boston Marathon. I know several people who have run it in the past and I knew about 12 people who ran it this year and several more who were cheering and even volunteering at the event. Some missed the events (that’s all I can call it right now is an event) by minutes and others by an hour. Thankfully, everyone I know is safe and sound.

I am not fast enough to run Boston but I respect it from having run the NYC Marathon. The marathon is sacred in the running community and Boston is our Holy Grail if you will. While all of us were attacked on that day, it was personal for runners.

We may not know each other by name but if you run a lot of races in New York City you recognize the faces. We are a community. A community that supports one another. Seriously, I have never seen such a supportive group of people whether it’s cheering each other on during a race or standing in a very long line at NYRR headquarters to buy a “I run for Boston” shirt. I recently read that approximately 50 percent of the funds raised for the One Fund Boston have come from the running community.

It was no surprise then that the NYRR Run for the Parks four mile race on Sunday Central Park was going to be big. Yes, it was going to be the first major running event with new security measures (more on that later) but it was really our chance to get out and run to show people how strong our community is.

I’ve said before on this blog that running helps me maintain the status quo on the normal days, celebrate the great days, and heal on the bad days. I don’t know a runner who didn’t feel that this past week and running in this race certainly helped us on our path to healing.

It was great to see everyone wearing the “I run for Boston” bibs on the back of their shirts and to see the sea of BAA blue and yellow along the course. Our community has united, like it did by volunteering in Staten Island after the NYC Marathon was canceled, in tremendous ways and I believe we will always continue to do that — hopefully for less tragic events.

It was a little strange to see such an extensive increase in security for our little four mile race. The procedures put in place were somewhat similar to the larger NYRR events like the marathon, NYC Half Marathon, and Brooklyn Half Marathon. Everyone received a clear plastic to put items in to check and no one was allowed in to certain areas without their bib. I have never seen a more secure porta potty section at a race in my life! On one hand, you are grateful that NYRR and the NYPD have extensive history on providing this type of security but saddened that we have to do it at all.

But even with all that, as NYPD Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly mentioned, it is almost impossible to completely protect open road races. One such incident did occur on Sunday when someone tried to ride their bike through a secure area of the park. The person did not stop when told and was eventually tacked. As I was running by at about the 3.5 mile mark we were moved off the road but told to keep running along. As I looked toward the policy activity I saw a police officer testing the cardboard box inside the guys back back for explosives. THAT IS NOT COMFORTING AT ALL! Thankfully it was just a timing gadget for kayaks. But nonetheless, I could have done without that.

Nothing is going to stop me from running because I need to run and I have more faith in humanity than I do in deranged evil people. In fact, I was reminded of a line that Hugh Grant’s character says in the movie Love Actually.

Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there – fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge – they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.

Yes, that is an underrated movie but applies in so many ways. After the event at the Boston Marathon I saw more love, kindness, and compassion than anything else. And to tie this all back into running, that is what I have always felt when I have run the NYC Marathon. All those amazing people cheering us on, wishing us well, and providing the occasional cookie or orange.

Later today I will register for the NYC Marathon and next week for the 2014 London Marathon. I will keep running, perhaps with a slightly heavier heart, but I do know that the running will make it light again.

She had talked about how many of the people she admired for their discipline also happened to be runners. She has a point and if you are a runner you know this. Just think about all the work we have to put in to train for a race. All that time we spend plotting out a training plan, taking the time out of our schedules to log those miles, and then completing the race.

Heart, Commitment, Gut, Strength, Discipline, and Pride. I need one that says Joy. I’ll be wearing these until the Brooklyn Half as a reminder of what it will take to run well. (c) Stacey Cooper

But as we all know maintaining the discipline every day can be hard and our discipline can leave a lot to be desired. That is exactly what has been happening with me these past couple of weeks. I have been slacking and letting the flimsiest of excuses get the best of me. I am not proud of this.

Thankfully, this past week has been a step down week in my training plan for the Brooklyn Half Marathon so this downturn won’t hurt my training too much. But now we are getting into the meat of my training. The weekly mileage will start building up and there won’t be a single digit long run in my future.

It is time to recommit myself to this training plan and in order to do it I’ll need to dig deep and get out of this rut. But there is one other thing I’ll need to remember to get through this rough patch.

That same woman who spoke about becoming more disciplined also displayed pure joy when she finished our run. We ran two loops of the Central Park lower 1.7 mile loop giving us a total mileage of about 3.46 miles — the farthest this woman ever ran. She was elated and high-fived us and kept thanking us for running with her.

As I’m training for my 15th marathon and start thinking about training for my third marathon it’s easy to forget that joy of completing a new distance for the first time. Her joy reminded me about how excited I was when I completed my first 3.5 mile race without walking and that for the first time I felt like a runner.

Brooklyn is just about a month away and these reminders couldn’t have happened at a better time. I’m going to take them to heart and try to never forget them again.

Welcome back to NY. (c) Stacey Cooper

When I get into the nine and above mileage distance I usually head into New York City and run along the Hudson but while scanning the list of things I needed to look for I knew I could do this where I live here in Westchester.

The rules were pretty simple; take a picture of the item on the list and post it to twitter. Each post is one entry for a bunch of cool prizes. The bonus round involves a blog post. So here it is that blog post.

Ugh, not a fun hill to run up. (c) Stacey Cooper

I’m glad I did this because last night a bunch of fun women to see Patricia Racette’s cabaret performance at 54 Below. It was a incredibly great evening, including the three glasses of wine. That alone usually makes for a difficult long run but I think I hydrated enough because I didn’t feel too many ill effects from it. Yeah, wine! You should also get a copy of Diva on Detour. You will not regret it!

The water tower at Water Baptist Cemetery. (c) Stacey Cooper

This RunChatHunt also gave me the opportunity to look around more and really take notice of things on my usual route and even change it up a bit.

One such detour took me to Comly Avenue in search of water, in particular the Byram River. There is a lovely downhill and it goes by Ward’s Castle, the former home of the Museum of

Ward’s Castle (c) Stacey Cooper

Cartoon Art where I spent many days during my summers watching cartoons in their viewing room. At the bottom of the hills I hit Byram River and remembered that we have a waterfall there. The unfortunate part about this is that I had to go back uphill to finish my photo gathering.

I of course went by Water Baptist Cemetery dating back to 1800′s with graves for the Merritt (think Merritt Parkway) and the Lyon family (think Lyon Park in Port Chester). Near the end of my run I went by the Bush Homestead,

It’s a bridge, a river, and a waterfall! (c) Stacey Cooper

a pre-revolutionary home, located right down the block from my home.

I’m so happy I did this RunChatHunt today if only because it made the run more fun and distracted me from staying in a target pace range or from thinking about what all that wine from last night did to me. It served as the reminder that we need these types of runs to keep from getting bored and in a rut. This may have cured my last bit motivational blahs I’ve had the past month.

Yeah, technically I know it’s still in me. I just have to run more consistently and do some speed work to get it back. Blah, blah, blah. That’s always so much easier to say than actually do but today was a positive step in that direction.

Look at Andy’s focus. That is FIERCE!

When I don’t run consistently one of the first things I lose is my ability to find a comfortable pace for whatever type of run I’m doing. For example, if I’m supposed to be doing a long run that is supposed to be a minute to two minutes slower than my race pace , I will run too fast and be out of breath by the third mile. Finding that conversation pace is hard then I try to run fast for some speed work or a tempo run and I just can’t turn it on.

During times like this, whether it’s on a long run or during a race, I do what I refer to as my Andy Pettitte. When Andy is on the mound and staring into the catcher’s mitt he pulls the brim of his cap down so that is all he can see. He zeroes in on the one thing he needs to focus on. When I feel things getting out of whack I do the same thing. I pull the brim of cap down so that I’m forced to keep my head up and look straight ahead and not get distracted by what is going on around me. (Best not to do this if you can’t see cars next to you. My public service announcement of the day.) Then I focus on my my form. My arms should be on the outside of my brim. You need to open up your chest. Remember your legs go as your arms go and it’s easier for those legs to go when your arms aren’t closing in on your torso.

I look more serious than fierce. Need to work on my fierce face.

That really did help get me through today’s long run. I’ve had such a bad tendency to start out too fast even when I know I shouldn’t I just somehow do. But once I got my Andy Pettitte on my pace started to even out and I felt better. The focus was where I needed it to be instead of thinking about cutting the run short or having to trick myself to keep running.

This was my first long run for the Brooklyn Half even though technically training started las week with the NYC Half as the first long run.

I start some of my two a day workouts during the latter half of the week and I’m oddly excited about that. If all goes well, it should really help me get closer to half marathon and marathon goals for this year.

I’m feeling like a runner again and I’m going to to thank Andy for that.

I think for me it is the half marathon. It’s a nice long distance race but not as taxing as a full marathon is — but I still love the marathon too.

Training for the full marathon requires a huge time commitment that not only you as the runner has to buy into but those who are close to you as well. If you have ever run one you know that you can’t fake it. You can’t cram for the marathon like you can a history test. What you put in is what you get out of it.

Look at me finishing my first half marathon in Brooklyn. That is an, “Oh thank god this is over” look. Also, I think I felt as though I were going to die. But look at how happy the woman behind me is. I beat her while she was being happy.

The half marathon is similar but doesn’t require the extensive training that the full does. I’ve proven on several occasions that with a solid base and consistent running you can make descent show of things. It may not have been pretty but I got them done.

The Brooklyn Half Marathon in 2009 was my very first half. I didn’t have a training plan just a vague idea that I should increase my mileage a little bit each week. This May I will be returning to Brooklyn for my 15th half and that seems like perfection to me.

Last week was supposed to be the start of my training for Brooklyn but yeah, I had to run another half marathon through Central Park, Times Square, the Battery Tunnel, and South Street Seaport. That made this week a well needed rest week.

I’m going to try for the half marathon PR again and that means I’ve got to stick to the training plan as much as possible. In order to do this I’ll be experimenting with my two a day workouts. If this works well I’ll be using that for the NYC Marathon training so keep your fingers crossed for me.

I’ll also need to refocus on my nutrition which tanked this winter. Everything about this winter really beat me up but I’ve got get things back in shape. I’ve pulled out all of my old nutrition plans from my former nutritionist so that I can things back in order.

Perhaps most importantly I’m excited about training again. (See note above about winter.) I’m ready to feel good about my running, to want to log all of those miles, and return to being that crazy person who says that they only ran 18 miles on a given day.

I am so ready to go the distance again.

So I ran a little half marathon today.

It was pretty darn cold this morning but running gets you warm right? Well maybe six miles into it.

This was going to be a tough for me no matter what the temperature was. Three half marathons each within three weeks of each other. It’s the first time I’ve done that and the only half that got consistent training for was the first one in Miami.

It was 28 degrees at the start of the NYC Half with a field of about 14,500. There were so many people in this race that we were lapped by the elite men before we were even near the start. The elite women lapped us when we were about 20 feet from the start.

The first half of this race is the always the most technically challenging due to the hills of Central Park. Then you throw in the cold weather and things just started off slow. I was worried about going out to fast but thankfully didn’t have to worry because just about everyone was slow.

Hello Times Square, I am so happy to see you after all those hills in Central Park. (c) Stacey Cooper

It was such a relief to leave the park where the course steadily goes downhill, but that didn’t mean it was going to be easy. The wind coming off the Hudson River as we turned onto 42nd Street.

I chose not to fight that wind and do my best to conserve my energy for the straight away on the West Side Highway and I am glad I did.

I felt pretty good the whole way on this stretch and started picking off people who had either been running close to me and then others who were ahead of me. One, I even picked off right at the finish. Sorry Nicole or Nicola, I’m not too sure which name the announcer said, but I was tired of all of the TnT coaches running onto the course to talk to you.

It is always a good feeling to pick people off during the late stages of a race and I’m glad that I was able to do that and not feel dead.

This was also the first major race in the city since Hurricane Sandy and it was nice to see the support for all of the runners along the course. It was even better to give some business to local restaurants in the downtown area that are still recovering from the storm.

Overall, this was the race I expected it to be. I knew it was going to be tough and I knew I wouldn’t have a great finishing time. But I am happy with how I was able to keep a steady pace and finish strong. It’s a good measuring stick for what I need to do to get ready for half marathon number 15 — the Brooklyn Half Marathon in May.

Overall, I felt that the article was flawed and so I’m going to break things down bit by bit.

1. The article starts off by mentioning that the number of finishers in the first two races of the years was down from the year before.

First citing that two races (Joe Kleinerman 1ok and the Al Gordon 4m) in winter are not a good measuring stick of a problem. In the years that I have been participating in NYRR races, since 2009, I have never seen these two events sell out. Not even when the Kleinerman was held in December and more people ran this event to get in their nine qualifying races to get guaranteed entry into the NYC Marathon.

It was also colder this winter than it was last year and well so many reasons why the total number of finishers could have been down.

Second, the NYC Half, Coogan’s, Brooklyn Half, and Colon Cancer Challenge races have already sold out. Other races like the Women’s More Magazine Half Marathon and Scotland 10k are nearing capacity and I have a feeling many more races will also sell out as registration opens for those events.

2. The article cites competition from the organizers of the Rock-n-Roll race series and NYCRUNs.

It’s hard to say the the one RnR 10k event serves as any sort of competition to NYRR. They’ve held this event twice and from people I know who ran the first year it was held said it was a disaster. When you expand to the rest of their events outside of NYC they also have mixed results with runner satisfaction. Last year’s DC event had many organization problems and let’s not forget their event and the not so great water issue.

I personally like NYCRUNs and have participated in a few of their events and have been satisfied. As stated in the Times article, they do cater to a smaller more community type of event. So far, no event has had more then 1,500 by design. Can NYRR learn from NYCRUNs? Yes, especially in reaching out to their community.

NYCRUNs can also learn from NYRR. The complete race results from their recent marathon and half marathon were not posted until three days after the event and it took about a week for results for a recent track meet to be posted. If NYRR had been this late posting results people would be calling for Mary Wittenberg’s head.

3. There was a complaint about the quality of t-shirts declining in recent years.

We’re starting to get into a pettiness area. But ok, let’s address this. Are you running the shirt? Yes, it is nice to have swag for these events but I’m not sure I completely understand this one. In the races I have participated in the common type of shirt was a cotton t-shirt. That has been pretty standard. But in recent years I have noticed that more and more races are proving tech shirts. So much so that you can almost run in only the tech shirt races and still get your nine qualifying races completed. Now the quality of the tech shirts has varied. These aren’t cheap and if you are only paying 18 bucks for a race don’t expect some Nike Dri-Fit.

4. NYRUNs has better bagels and gives out hot chocolate.

I wasn’t going to include because of the pure STUPIDITY of this. It’s so stupid I had to put it in all caps. Really, people complain about the bagels.

I haven’t had a bagel after a NYCRUNs event so I can’t offer a comparison. But realistically, even though we live in the bagel capital of the world, I’m not sure that there are too many companies that can provide over 6,000 bagels for an event as compared to those that can provide “better” bagels for an event with no more than 1,500 people.

Again this is just pure STUPID.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m all rah, rah, rah, NYRR. The organization does have areas where they can improve.

The article mentions that their marketing strategist has left and longtime spokesperson will soon be leaving. This could be a good thing because NYRR’s PR stinks.

Remember the outrage before the 2011 marathon when the NYTimes reported that NYRR spent a million dollars on a new logo and website? In actuality, that’s not what they really spent the money on. It was on a marketing strategy to increase their presence in the community and encourage healthy living through running. That message got lost because 1) NYRR failed to notify the membership first where they could have controlled the message and focused more on the community initiatives. 2) Of course, the Times would focus on the money aspect which is then what everyone else focused on.

NYRR has a wonderful program for kids that is now spreading outside of NYC. We should be proud of that. I don’t see RnR or NYCRUNs doing that.

I’m not sure if I want to touch on Ponchogate as I’m not sure there was a way that NYRR could have managed that better. Maybe if they came up with their ultimate decision of a choice between baggage or no baggage earlier that would have help because I know the no baggage policy was discussed much earlier than when it was announced.

I’m not touching on the whole marathon cancellation thing. That has been done ad nauseum already.

NYRR is not perfect but neither are RnR and NYCRUNs. But I do know that there are few organizations that can put on a well organized race better than NYRR. I think we have all experienced those horribly organized events and became appreciative of something we have become spoiled to.

I also believe that some of the people who constantly complain about NYRR are similar to those who hate Apple or Microsoft just because who they are and that there is nothing that can be done to win those people over.

The watch calculates distance without gps and use of a foot pod, meaning it’s in the watch and basically relies on your arm swing to help calculate your stride, more on this later.

As with most gadget things there are instructions. Instructions that can make life difficult if your dyslexic like me. After a few reads through I was finally able to figure out what to do to calibrate it. First I did the walk and then the run portion around the park by my house. Ideally, when you calibrate these things you should do this on a track where you know the measured distance and it is flat. But oh well, I’m a rebel like that.

After calibrating, I took it out on my seven mile long run. It did get ahead of my actual distance by a mile or so. I wasn’t too concerned as that has been my experience with non-gps devices and that whole not calibrating on the track but on hills.

I then took it with me to the gym on Monday, where I really wanted to use this. I did a great job. It matched the treadmill up until I took a walk break and didn’t swing my damn arm. The watch registered zero speed while I was walking but I wasn’t swinging my arm enough. That’s hard to do on a treadmill without looking like a dork.

Overall, I would say this is a good watch for shorter distances but make sure you keep your arms moving but not so much for longer distances. Perhaps I will actually get a track and re-calibrate and then re-check the accuracy on a long run.

Because of my love for gadgets, this have given me the opportunity to be a bit of guinea pig at times. I love passing on my knowledge of things to you and you can count on these being honest reviews since I get zero compensation from anyone.

This week, I happened to try out two new things: KT Tape Skin Prep Spray and a Tooks hatphone.

KT Tape is not new and I’ve used it regularly for the past couple of years. But sometime during the summer I started having problems with the strips sticking at all or for less than a day. That’s not great when you want it to stay in place for 4-5 days. I’ve been good about following the directions for applying the tape but still, it was always hit or miss on how long the tape would last. I had resorted to using a bandage skin prep that is used in hospitals but that is expensive. Finally, I hit the KT Tape forum to see if I was the only pathetic soul with this problem — I’m not. It was reading through this thread that I learned that KT Tape makes their own skin cleaner and skin prep spray.

I got to try this out with the tendonitis on the top of my foot that bothers me from time to time. The feet are tricky because putting on and taking off socks can cause enough friction to pull on the tape and also get caught on sheets when you sleep. Last night I put on a new application using both the cleaning spray and the skin prep spray. Right away I could tell I was going to get a good stick. So far this has been working great and I can tell this application will last the whole week. I do have some parts that are pulling up but that’s because I didn’t wear a sock when I slept last night as is recommended. But if you have problems getting the tape to stick I would get this spray. You can buy the combo pack directly from KT Tape for about 20 bucks.

Years ago when Nike and Apple had their partnership with the iPod Nano and the Nike+ app they came out with a hatphone which was a beanie with built in headphones and a pouch for your nano. I loved this hat. My nano fit great and not having to string regular headphones under a beanie was a plus. They always seemed a little tight in my ears when I did that. I still use the hat but now I clip my shuffle into the Nano pouch. The hat however is white, or was white, and I wanted to get a black one to go with it but Nike doesn’t make them any more.

Bring in Tooks. There’s nothing complex about these hats. They have removable headphones that align with your ears. You can adjust the actual placement with the velcro on the headphones. Just plug the cord into your device and you’re ready to go. My one negative about this is that it just has the one long cord length so I have to coil the cord up into the hat to prevent it from swinging around. Since I attach my shuffle to the hat I don’t need all the cord. The Nike hat had a short cord but came with an extension if you wanted to use it with something other than the Nano. I don’t feel the cord so this is fine, just a minor inconvenience.

The sound quality is pretty good and you can still hear things around you like traffic. It comes in a bunch of different styles and is reasonably priced. I got mine for 18 bucks through the Active GearUp deals.

I was hoping to review the Tech4o watch that will accurately calculate distance without the use of a foot pod but my mailman was late today. I’m hoping to test it out tomorrow and will double fist with my Garmin to test it accuracy.

Gadgets are fun, especially when they work!

I had two weeks of not so great race results. The Central Park Half Marathon last week and the Coogan’s Salsa, Blues, and Shamrocks 5k today. Very different distances, but same sluggish results. But there are things that I was able to take away from these two races that can help get me back on track as well as a couple of things I’m doing on my own.

First, even with the minimal amount of running, I’m too far off from where I want to be. I was looking back at my running log for the year, yes, it’s only March but the one notation I have for every single week is to “run more consistently.” I feel confident that things will fall into place if I just start running more consistently.

One of the challenges I have faced for the past year is that I am not able to run in the evening due to other responsibilities that I have. While switching over to the early morning run was a challenge it quickly began to embrace it and enjoy that time. But winter took a toll on me and that became harder to accomplish. I’m still going to get my ass out of bed at 5:00 am but I joined the gym right next to my office. The treadmill is not the most ideal place to get my daily miles in but at least I can get them in during lunch.

The treadmill also plays into a bigger plan for my upcoming training. Due to the time constraints I haven’t been able to log all the miles that half marathon and full marathon training plans require. I’ve been able to get the weekend long runs done but during the week I can rarely run longer than four miles. Enter the two a day work out. I’ve done this in other sports and have read a lot about runners doing the same. So that is the plan as training ramps up for the Brooklyn Half and then the NYC Marathon. I’ll run my three miles in the morning and log the remaining miles during lunch.

Brooklyn is my next goal race for getting a new half marathon PR. Training for that will officially starts on March 11 but that is the week of the NYC Half so it will be a low mileage week. I’ll have to pay closer attention to my body and realize that on some days the two a day workouts may not be the best thing. But I’m optimistic about the results that this can bring me.

Just getting this plan together has me excited about running again and that in itself is the start that I need.