after a couple of days of rigorous discipline which involved two bottles of vodka plus a few pounds of chicken wings and quesadillas, i ran the globally organized Nike 10km Human Race. with 10,000 people to compete against in New York City alone, plus another 29 cities across the globe (which would make it 300,000 runners in total), i clocked in at 51 minutes and 10 seconds ranking 33,673 in the world. with my original goal of coming in the top half of the NYC race alone, ranking just beyond the top quintile put me well beyond my goal. sure its not the olympics or even a marathon, but it was quite an experience.a race 10 thousand deep with bottle-neck straight-aways where any lack of judgement in the space between and pace of other runners meant that somebody was hitting the pavement (and i saw it happened more than once). on the starting line i actually got stuck in the middle of the pack so i had to take any and every opportunity to pass 10 to 20 runners at a time. this meant strategic bursts of speed, peripheral angular cuts, occasional off-track running, and taking wide corners in order to burst by those trying to stay tight.
i saw a couple of people get their legs accidentally clipped by other runners dropping hard to the ground. others trying to run on the grass ending up with a face full of mud. and one getting inadvertently tackled from behind as he suddenly stopped for a gatorade at the refreshments table to the chagrin of the runner right behind him.
the finish line was quite intense as they designed it to be coming into a stadium full of family and friends in the grandstand. when running toward the finish line i actually turned my head to the right to catch a break from the actual race and bank a few moments of joy and goosebumps.Chino NY
more visuals and commentary available from hypebeast:
http://hypebeast.com/2008/
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