In loving memory of the Fern Hollow Bridge, I decided to bring up some old unpublished photos of Pittsburgh Bridges. Around 2014-2015, I ran around the city and took these photos.
1. Between CMU and Schenley Plaza over Boundary St
Couples put locks over it. I bet less than 25% are still together.
2. Between CMU and Schenley Park over the lake
3. Blvd of Allies to Schenley over trail. Has two segments.
4. Bloomfield bridge
5. Fort Pitt bridge (morning before Pgh Marathon 2015)
The leftmost one
6. Smithfield Bridge
The blue one in the center.
7. Roberto Clemente Bridge
Closed for traffic during Pirates games.
8. Andy Warhol Bridge
2nd of 3 similar bridges from dahntahn to nor'side.
The front one.
9. Veterans Bridge (the landmark I look for if I'm lost around the nor'side)
What would happen to the power of Christian unity if Christmas and Easter were optional and flexible dates? The strength of tradition is in its consistency. So I'm religiously continuing with my birthday 5Ks.
Virginia Beach is a city on the East Coast revolving around (drumroll) a beach. Norfolk 20 miles west seems to take all the industrial and financial load of the area, leaving solely rest and recreation to Virginia Beach.
I'm writing this to say that the tradition of running 5Ks on my birthdays, established last year, is alive and well. The main message of the tradition is to show that I spend my bdays as I want (running), not as you want (parties, presents, and that).
We apparently won the first place in the mixed male+female category. As if tis wasn't enough, we beat all teams in the relay. But before fulfilling my duties in the last leg of the relay (starting around mile 22), I moved around the marathon course and took pictures of this incredible event.
Through pain and sorrow do I realize that short-distance running without proper training is nearly as bad as long-distance running without proper training.
I raced a 30k in North Park this Saturday at Just a Short Run 2013. It went well, and I finished in 2:00:03. It's slower than my last year's result by ~100 seconds. On the other hand, it's my first [completed] race this season, and I wasn't inclined to do it all-out. The details are below.
(Another slightly unrelated intro) Long-distance runners need strong motivation, for they put massive amounts of time and energy into training. Usually motivation comes from two games of numbers: workout parameters (mileage, pace) and racing results (times, places). I call these "games" because of their overall meaninglessness, but this is a topic for a separate post. Anyway, I decided to set up my own game that would complement running. A task of taking photos of churches while running seemed both substantial and doable.
So here I present you my first batch of 29 worship places (desperately trying to generalize the narrow word church) of Pittsburgh. I like awkward numbers, too.
I just physically cannot be silent about all this awesomeness.
Tequila 10k
The Hounds (the running club I've been chilling out with) faced the winter of 2012 with an easy, warm, and fun Tequila 10k (TTK) on December 1.
The first TTK of 2012 was conceived as a combination of the most enjoyable activities the humanity ever experienced: running and voluntary self-intoxication. The concept is pretty simple: run a 10k stopping at bars/houses and doing shots of tequila.
As far as I recall, there were six shots in total, with one opening the run and one concluding it at the same place.
The map of tequila 10k.
All I remember at this point is that the run started out quite orderly, even with a flavor of competition, which faded away along with our soberness. Closer to the end, Brandon lost control over his air horn (no implicit joke intended), cops showed up, and some of us rolled down the Negley hill.
The pure running time was in the order of 80-some minutes. Still, a PR for all of us. It was probably my easiest PR ever. For whatever reason I've never seen a single photo from this run. Maybe they just didn't want to embarrass me.
All-Day Run
On January 27, 2013 the brave five of us went out under the motto, "run till you collapse". Yes, literally. It was the first time I ever ran without a fixed distance limit in mind.
At the outset, without Mr. Brown.
It took us the whole day to destroy ourselves - starting at dawn and finishing after dusk. We ran most in our miles in the 8:40-9:40 pace, which is more shuffling than running.
At the outset, with Mr. Brown.
He doesn't look very brown tho.
I'd say more like Mr. Green-Pink.
Four out of five stopped between miles 40 and 43 (40 miles is 64.3 km, or 1.5 marathons). Laura continued until mile 50 and thus planted the seeds of despair in our souls. Is she an alien? An android? A time traveler? All this remains to be seen.
During the adventure we met a sane sexist car without a driver and an insane car with a driver. From this experience I draw an obvious conclusion of sexist = sane, ignoring the factor of a driver as statistically insignificant.
We got vital help and encouragement from several fellow Hounds during the last third of the run. What they received in return was quite a bit of slow running - no more, no less.
At 30-ish miles, still standing.
Notice the first aid station (actually it's difficult not to notice him).
Overall, it was a truly awesome experience of seeing the lights of our lives dim. I know I will do something like this again.
Some of us ended up with minor injuries, such as stress fractures, ITBS, and the general disgust at slow running. I'm not sure if acute feminism counts as an injury, a spark of illumination, or both.
What's coming up
There's a beer mile closer to the summer. It's a mile race that involves drinking a pint of beer every 400m. It's a fairly established event with outstanding record times, but I failed to attend it so far.
I also highly advocate doing a whole-night run in summer, as a counterpart of this All-Day Run. It makes perfects sense given Pittsburgh weather.
P.S. I feel kinda bad about not including pizza into the list of most enjoyable activities ever known to the humanity. Sorry, pizza, I will not repeat this mistake.
If you're not interested in the events loosely related to this marathon, scroll down straight to the point.
My finisher's certificate.
So far I do not have access to most photos. I'll upload them later.
Training
I was in quite a poor shape for this race. I actually did about 4.5 weeks directly pointing at the marathon -- exactly the time that I had in Pittsburgh minus the Great Race.
Before that, in Moscow, I was got down by the visa issue: I would run a couple of miles, stop, walk home, and eat a lot of candy. This doesn't usually work well with marathons.
I did only two of "long" runs in preparation to Columbus, one was 15 miles (then I ran of out fuel) and 18 miles (lots of walking and rest).
In one sentence, I didn't set very high expectations for this race.
On the Eve of the Marathon
Alina and I had a very nice Saturday in Columbus -- the capital of the Ohio (reads "Oh-ee-yo") state.
First we drove through the fascinating Fall scenery of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio for several hours.
Food stops is an appropriate decoration for any scenery.
Guess: some trucks crashed here.
We visited the Columbus Marathon Expo. One should never disregard the joy of shopping, right?
Saw the Ohio Statehouse.
Saw other sorts of nicely-looking building with little idea about their functional purpose.
It is very symbolic that the office is on Gay street.
We also visited the famous Rose Garden, which has unfortunately mostly faded.
We also went to the Topiary Garden. For my commoner's view, it's just a bunch of human shapes made out of plants.
Err, not only human.
Oh yeah, and many ducks.
Then we just went to our hotel room and slept until 4:30am. Getting up so early was not the moment favored the most by Alina. She even refused to take a collective picture.
The temperature was perfect: about 42F (~5C) in at the start and about 60F (~15C) at my finish.
No explanation given.
We arrived early enough to go around the area, which was flooded by people in the next 30 minutes.
At the local Times Square.
Ghostly Statehouse.
Some American flags are almost as big
as the whole America.
Crowds gathered in the starting corrals at 7, so I couldn't even get to A, where I was assigned. I just sat on the ground, trying to not give my legs more stress than the race promised.
The orchestra is about to perform the anthem.
And finally, a bunch of military guys performed the national anthem.
Shortly, the race started.
Let me finish with the photos at this point and continue some time later. To get a sense of the whole race, take a look at the recap video:
With respect to my age, I ran poorly: 393 age grade place overall (this means being rated based not just on the time, but on the combination of time and age). Here's the full list.
19 women have beaten me. Almost all of them are older than me. Ha-ha. Incidentally, I'm 19th in my division (males 20-24). Conclusion: if those women decided that they needed a young bf who is slower than they are, I would be picked!
The run went through cool areas like Bexley, German Village, and the Ohio State University.
It was flat and fast.
My average pace before mile 20 was around 6:45-6:50 per mile (4:13-4:15 per kilometer). After that point, I started to walk, chill out, and flirt with spectators because my legs were not good for running anymore. If not for the downhill final miles, I probably wouldn't have been able to get to the end at all.
It's all good and well, but it's time to think about the next Spring. Boston marathon registration closed 10 days before I qualified for it in Columbus. Other options that are relatively close and well-known are the marathons of Cincinnati, Cleveland, and obviously Pittsburgh (all in May). So far I'm biased toward the Cleveland one.
