A truck on fire wrecks havoc to a race

It's a go! Start of the 5k.

For Labor Day I decided to run a 10k in my backyard. It was my second 10k and I was eager to improve my time. Unfortunately, it did not work out. It was a very humid day and I thought to myself that it was probably a much better day to run a 5k instead of a 10k, especially that the 5k was scheduled just before the 10k. Nevertheless the gun went off and the race was a go. The route pretty much makes you go around the island almost twice. When the Queensboro Bridge was back in my view I noticed black smoke coming from the lower roadway and when I got closer I saw fire. That was the second fire on the same bridge and roadway in three weeks. Since I heard small explosions I wondered if race management would stop or reroute the race but by the time I was at the bridge I was waved through to run the predetermined route and that was that. I reached the finish line in 44:24 minutes which is equivalent to an average pace of 7:10 minutes per mile, just a slightly bit slower than last week. During the award ceremony, though, we were told that only the top three finishers of men and women would get an award because there was no correct time to be had for everybody else. The reason was that just moments after I passed the bridge the rest of the runners were rerouted to a much shorter route which, of course, invalidated the finishing times because nobody knew who ran what distance exactly. NYCRUNS did the decent thing and offered all runners a discount to the next 5k/10k on Roosevelt Island in December (which, unfortunately, I will not attend because I want to run a NYRR 15k the day after instead).

First finisher of 5k race

My next race will be a simple 5k on Coney Island and two weeks later I will tackle longer distances. First off a 10 miler in the Bronx and a week later two half-marathons on the following two Sundays. I am not quite sure how I will prepare for it but I will make it work somehow. I am still suffering a little bit from the week I ran around 40 miles so I had to reduce my mileage by quite a bit and had to take two weeks off here and there. I am thinking of starting out with a single loop around the island in the morning followed by some speed work around the soccer field behind the apartment building I live in. Then ramp it up to a mix of single and double rounds with a long run across the Queensboro Bridge and then up or down Manhattan up to 10 miles on Sunday, concluding with a relaxed 6 mile group run on Mondays. Tuesdays and Wednesdays have always been my rest days. I am planning on running the 10 miler with a 8 minutes/mile pace. That will determine my fitness for the two 13.1 miles races. Stay tuned.