Jenni in Training

It was 4:40am and my alarm was making the most hideous noise, and then I realized, I had set the alarm for this time. Somewhere on a farm in middle America, the roosters were still asleep, but I was awake because I had had the last 2 days off and now it was time to race! Today was the Queens half marathon and I was going for a personal best on my half marathon time. The air was chilly and it was dark and our taxi driver got lost. We spent a good 10 minutes trying to maneuver our way to the start, and we weren’t the only one’s unfamiliar with the area. Several other cars with runners tucked snuggly inside were staring at maps and pointing at the street signs along side us.

Eventually we made it to the start. One thing I noticed at today’s race was the changes between the start and finish of the race. 6:30am and people are shivering in their little running shorts in the dark. Take it to 3 hours later, 9:30am people are dripping with sweat with gigantic smiles across their faces, chatting away, cheering on the rest of the runners making their way across the finish line. It’s amazing what a little adrenaline can do to you.

Several funny stories came out of today’s race, but I must first mention that I had no idea that a place like where we were running existed in a Queens neighborhood so close to Manhattan. When you get further out into Queens I would expect to see normal houses, but what we saw today was amazing, McMansions! For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term “McMansion”, it is commonly seen in the suburbs of New Jersey; giant brick and mortar monstrosities that all look the same and take up as much space possible on the plot of land, leaving barely any grass but a gigantic house that looks exactly like every other house on the block. Mass produced mansions. I had to ask myself, did we run to New Jersey? But no, we were in Queens.

So onto what I thought was a hilarious thing to happen at mile 8 of a half marathon. Now we all now that there lots of bald wrinkly old men who are out there running, most usually without shirts; which I must mention I think is fantastic. Stay in shape, it will help you live longer, these men and women prove it. But I digress; at about mile 8 the running crowd got quiet and we were all in our own little worlds, running through suburbia. Out of no where you hear this man’s voice saying “Oh, I’m sorry, but it happens. That’s why they call us old farts.” He had farted. And he’s right, sometimes it does happen, but he then continued on to tell the three young men he was running beside (and the few dozen runners around him) about how a few years ago he had been “courting a young lady” for four months and the were running a marathon in New Hampshire when at about mile 18 he let out “quite a loud fart”. Of course at this point the two girls running next to me looked over and started to giggle. I, in turn, just started laughing out loud. Our laughter egged this nice old man on, saying how he missed her and how she decided she didn’t want to be a single mother. Turns out she was 33. This nice old man was at least 75.

He then picked up his pace, breezed by us and said without looking back “don’t follow too close behind ladies, you’ve been forewarned…” And off he went. At this point, we were laughing hysterically. If I had to give him a name I think he looked like a “Norman”.

I finished in 1:54, my personal best. Beating my NYC half marathon time from early August by 3 minutes! San Fran is 4 weeks from today, bring it!