The New York Running Show

Listen to Episode 19

Episode 19 was themeless. Steve, Brenn, and Joe had a “discussion” about rude runners. Just when is it OK to stand on a roadway? We talked about NYPD’s crackdown on cyclists in Central Park, the topic of a blog post from Joe.

Steve reviewed happenings in Prospect Park, particularly the Cherry Tree 10-miler, which was held Sunday morning. This led to a conversation about the large Brooklyn running clubs and running at the Park Slope Armory Y.

Brenn had some interesting, and useful, data on negative splitting the NYC Marathon, or more precisely lower positive splitting. It’s the subject of his most recent podcast.

Listen to Episode 18

On Sunday we talked Social Media. Twitter, Facebook. Lines were drawn, positions taken. In the end, though, consensus was reached. These are tools that can be incredibly useful to expand one’s involvement in the running community but different people to approach them in different ways.

Our moment of zen was a sad, cautionary one, concerning one of Joe’s friends who tore stuff up last week during a run when he landed on, and who begins (but does not end) his discussion of it on his StalkingThePodium blog. This brought to light the recent Running Times article by before-she-was-famous Julie on various ways to train when you can’t be running.

Listen to Episode 17

News

• This happened a bit ago, but we just found out about it. A local 50+ sprinter was busted by the IAAF for doping; two-year suspension.
• Registration for Brooklyn Half is tomorrow at Noon. NYRR still doesn’t know when the race itself begins though. It’s been posted at 9:30 and 7. Now it’s “TBD.” I’ve asked NYRR about it; no response yet. Club runners are warned to enter because NYRR may be difficult about late entries although it’s a club race.
• Brenn: Bernard Lagat going for 2-mile record in Armory.
• Julie published a piece in the on-line edition of Running Times on cross-training. Not your typical stuff. And Joe will be on RunnersRoundTable on Wednesday on this very subject.
• Frank and Steve spoke of the PPTC’s Cherry Tree 10-miler and 10-mile relay on Feb. 20. It’s the same day as the Taconic RR’s Freezer 5-miler at FDR Park in northern Westchester.
• And Steve will be on a panel on Social Media with NYRR’s Sean Haubert on Thursday at 4 at the JackRabbit store on 14th Street, moderated by Karla Bruning.

Blog of the Week

• Julie selected: WashingtonRanHere

The main topic: The Empire State Building Run-Up, which Amy ran.

Moment of Zen: Steve and his dog.

Listen to Episode 16

The Circus Comes To Town. On Friday, the 104th Millrose Games were held at Madison Square Garden. And New York Running Show had it covered. TK and Steve Lastoe gave us their on-site reports.

TK provided, and read from, our Blog of the week: LongRush.

Listen to Episode 15

Joe, Karla, Steve and Julie talked about the pros and cons of NYRR’s changes to the Club Points Races calendar for 2011. All of us implored NYRR to carefully consider how they manage the Fifth Avenue Mile especially. And Steve pre-announced an upcoming NYCRuns.com announcement about a new series of races for area clubs to look forward to competing in.

NYRR has released the schedule for the 2011 Club Series. Nine races. Seven scored. One mile. To 26.21875. Here they are:

• Coogans 5k March 6
• Scotland Run 10k April 10
• Brooklyn Half May 21
• Father’s Day 5m June 19 (Men)/ Mini 10k June 11 (Women)
• Central Park 4m July 16
• Team Champs 5m Aug 6
• Percy Sutton 5k Aug 20
• 5th Ave. Mile Sept 24
• Grete’s Half Oct 2
• NYCM Nov 6
• JoeK 10k Dec 4

[Correction: On the show and here, the Father’s Day 5-miler was listed as a 10K. Our source set us straight. It remains a 5-miler.]

[Correction II: Um, there are 11 races, nine of them scored.]

Sadly, we were Moment of Zen-less this week. But we did want everyone to remember that the Millrose Games is coming to Madison Square Garden on Friday.

Listen to Episode 14

On Episode 14, with Amy, Brenn, and Julie, the main topic was Central Park.

We shared a number of maps of the Park:

• Soundkeepers (distances of segments)
• From NY Flyers
• Central Park.com (bathrooms)

We had an intro about the most-recent NYRR issue — how it decided who gets to do the Empire State Building Run-Up, a topic we’ll address in a later show.  We also spoke of our various experiences, including workouts, in Central Park.

Our Moment of Zen:

A friend (a guy) tweeted: “Hey guys: If you’re going to wear running tights, put a pair of shorts on over them. Nobody wants to see your junk.” While we were left wondering whence this question came — men having been running in tights without shorts for over a decade — the consensus:

• Amy and Julie agreed: They don’t care. Notwithstanding what men may think, they don’t spend a lot of time, or thought, on the male crotch.
• Brenn: I wear shorts, as do most of the CPTC guys.
• Joe: No.

Listen to Episode 13

On Episode 13, we spoke of a number of racing series that local clubs put on in the Tri-State area. Among them:

• The Boston Build-Up in southern Fairfield County
• Taconic’s FDR Park Races in northern Westchester
• NYS Parks Winter Series on the Island
• The New Jersey Trail Series, with lots of different distances. Many races in Morristown. (On Facebook.)
• Passaic County Winter Series.

Regarding the Passaic races, RD Rick tells me:

Most of our races are close to NJ Transit, either bus or train.  For Febapple the Millburn train station is right across the street.  For Lewis Morris Park (this weekend) the station is maybe 3 miles away.  There are lots of runners from around here though that have picked up runners at the station [but] there is nothing fixed provided by NJ Trail Series.  We do not have enough constant interest to require the use of a bus or other additional transportation option for NYC runners.

Speaking of Facebook, we’ve added a Group Page for the show.

The Holiday Marathons at VCP were mentioned. Here’s the website: TheHolidayMarathons.com And Emmy reminisced about the Bronx Zoo run she won. It’s no longer put on by NYRR, but the next one will be on April 30; it’s a fundraiser for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Finally, Emmy spoke of the wonders of age-grading. Here’s a post on it.

Listen to Episode 13

Listen to Episode 12

The panel: Amy, Ari, Brenn, Julie, and Joe. The topic du jour: The year in review. Good, bad, ugly. We’ll see. We spoke about where we were and where we hope to go in the coming year. Brenn asked us to discuss our respective blogs, where they were going, and where they’d been. And a few of us were cornered into into admitting what our 2011 plans are. Plus a wee bit on coaching, likely the subject of a later show.

Julie ended the show by a quick recap of major running headlines for the year.

Listen to Episode 11

The Boston Athletic Association recently sent a notice out that it was rethinking how qualifications for the Boston Marathon will be held in the future. Someone noted that the letter did not make a lot of sense since there’s only one way to fix Boston and that’s to adjust the qualifying times so that everyone who runs a qualifier is in. NYRR had its own tempest with the New York City Half-Marathon, which is done by lottery but a lottery, it turns out, that is heavily biased against New York-area runners. NYRR is trying to make its own adjustments for the race in the future. Yet unlike the BAA, the solution is far from simple.

So we thought we’d talk about that and more generally about ways NYRR could improve. And that’s what we’ll be doing Sunday, December 26 at 8pm.  As always, information on how to join is at Directions (above) and access to the show via TalkShoe (right).

Listen To Episode 10

This episode focused on winter running, what you wear, where you go. On the latter, Ari pointed out that there is a 14-mile paved network at the Saddle River County Park in the Paramus area. He also said that there are groups of people getting together for runs there all the time, as is the case with the Rockies. So if you live in that neck of the woods, you might want to head over to see about running there and meeting people there.

We had TK, Brenn, Steve, Julie, Amy, and Ari and spoke again about gloves and tights and stuff, with Julie (who spoke of her Ted Corbitt adventure) promoting Terramar Thermasilk Glove Liner, which are glove liners, but which she wears as stand-alone, easily-taken-off gloves.

Amy wowed us with her tale of racng the Pete McArdle 15K at Van Cortlandt, and Steve said that the folks who brought us the Thanksgiving Marathon at Van Cortlandt are doing a Christmas Marathon/Half-Marathon/10K on Christmas Day, 11am on Christmas.

And this got us talking about the NYC Half-Marathon, but Steve suggested this is a topic for broader discussion. And so it will be as our next show will talk about what we’d do if we ran NYRR.  That’ll be next Sunday at 8.

Click that TalkShoe Button to the right (or you can click here). For instructions, go to the Directions tab above (or just click here). We’ve been going back-and-forth about a regular slot for the show — remember that once it’s in the can it’ll be available online and via iTunes — and it looks like we’re leaning towards Sundays at 8.  So we’re giving that slot a try.