Ellizabeth Lambert

I know who Elizabeth Lambert is. She’s a junior at the University of New Mexico who plays defense for the school’s women’s soccer team. I don’t know the name of any other woman, or man, playing college soccer in the United States. Thus the amazing Internet.

A couple of viral videos shot around the Internet on Friday of some rough play by Lambert in a conference semifinal against BYU. Since the videos only showed parts of the game, it’s hard to figure what else was going on. In a nutshell. BYU was up 1-0 in the second half when Lambert committed some fouls, the most egregious being when she whipped a BYU player to the ground by yanking on her pony tail. She also gave an elbow to the back of another BYU player, gave a hip-check to a BYUer heading into the box, and engaged in some aggressive tackling. I thought the hip-check warranted a free kick (although I don’t know if one was given and the more dramatic sight on that play was another UNMer kicking the ball into the face of the fallen BYU player). The elbow to the back was pure, and immediate, retaliation for an elbow to the stomach.

Now the hair-pull warranted a red card; although the BYU player was tugging on Lambert’s shorts moments before, this was too much. And not having seen the rest of the game, I’m guessing that the ref was not calling a tight game generally. Only one yellow card was given, to Lambert for one of her fouls.

There ensued much Sturm und Drang on the subject. Today’s Times had a piece on whether there was a double standard between men and women. There have been the obligatory LetsRun threads (whence I learned of the thing in the first place).

But I actually am more sympathetic to what Paul Ciolino said on CBS News.com, “Elizabeth Lambert Video: Attractive, Aggressive, Suspended… Victim?” Sure the pony-tail pull was too much, as was Zidane’s head-butt. But if a ref lets people play to a certain level, the players will play up (or down) to it. When Pre returned from the Olympics, he said, “From now on, I’m going to be a dirty son of a bitch. I’m going to foul a lot of people. I’ll get thrown out of a few races, but it’s time we Americans learned to run like the Europeans.”

But what about the ladies? Back in the early 80’s, my Warren Street teammate Isabelle Carmichael was one of the top runners in the New York area. She told the story of being at an event after winning a race at which she described the woman she beat as a “tough mother-fucker” and how the people in the room where shocked to hear such language. Now, I wouldn’t use it, but I can think of more than a few women runners who would in a heart-beat.

It’s an attitude that translates into performance, in training and in work-outs, and you see it at any NYRR Club race. In the end, we’re all just athletes.

Back to Lambert. The amazing power of the Internet. One morning she’s just another college kid and the next the poster-child for bad behavior. She’s in a game (BYU went on to win 1-0) in which her team’s losing, she’s a bit frustrated, she overreacts a bit. It happens.

Carl Sagan: “A Glorious Dawn”

From Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, this is something done by John Barry on the Symphony of Science site:

The IT Man

Little irony here. I didn’t try to run the marathon for fear of hurting my knee. So something happened and it appears that my IT band has gone nuts. I’ve never had this before, but I’ll just have to wait it out. Today was not as bad as yesterday which was not as bad as Wednesday. Here’s hoping tomorrow is a bit better.

And then one of these days I’ll be running again.

memory lane

NRHM, 1984

In the meantime, I can reminisce. I came upon a story (PDF) about the New Rochelle Half-Marathon in May 1984, to which I refer in my review of Charlie Spedding’s “From Last To First,” this one referring to Treacy winning by a “country mile.” I knew Treacy was in the race, so I let him go. The course was perfectly flat for the first 1+, then up Paine Boulevard (a pretty tough climb up which I sometimes do Repeats) through mile 2, down, a real flat stretch (on which I ran frequently in high school), and then up and down local streets, including up Paine a second time before mile 12.

It was a nice course, and my first race for Warren Street was the year before. I lived in the City at the time, and it was strange to be running on a Saturday morning around these suburban streets, all alone, people out in their yards watching me go by. Some fool went out with Treacy, and I passed him, the fool, at 6, running the balance of the race alone in a slight drizzle.

The New York Road Runners Club, as it was then known, put on several races out of the City in those days, most notably the Yonkers Marathon and the Westchester Half-Marathon, but it no longer appears to leave the City. The Westchester Marathon, which was run from White Plains to New Rochelle (it may have gone the other way in some years) was a medium-big local race which disappeared I think in the 80s. I don’t know how long the New Rochelle Half-Marathon lasted, but it was only a few years.

The current Westchester Half-Marathon is run on the Bronx River Parkway in October, but it’s very expensive and while I spend a lot for the NYC Marathon (or, maybe next year, the NYC Half), I’m hard-pressed to justify paying exorbitant amounts when there are comparable HMs nearby at the same time for half the price.

Back to the picture. So I’ve been running with a head-tilt for quite some time.

Herb’s NYC Marathon

I recruited Herb Carroll for Sound Shore. I came across him on CoolRunning threads. He was really committed to running, newly-discovered for him, and lived in Westchester. So I got him for the Club. He became a pretty active member, always trying to upgrade what folks were doing. I very much wanted to be part of the Reach-the-Beach team, but was left off. Sound Shore’s team was purely based on first-come/first-serve (with the provisio that each member had to be willing to do the work needed to run her best in the race), and Herb was left off although he would have been one of our stronger runners. (This was true in 2006 and 2007, but the team has since included non-SSRMCers.)

Herb helped me out considerably when we found ourselves at the end of slow-moving port-a-san lines just before the Manhattan HM in January 2007, and he kindly took my bag so I at least could get to the start before the horn (he was several minutes late). He worked really hard for the 2007 NYC Marathon, but blew up. I recall this because posted on the Club’s website an item “NYC Marathon disaster.” He ran 3:29:39 (after going out in 1:34:21), which was a shock to me as well.

I promised myself to take a break after this race. I actually have no choice at this point because this has left me spent. Even more than last year’s marathon of 3:18. I wish I could have ended it on a better note. The months of training and diligence would have been made sweeter with at least a BQ, but I know I’ve gotten myself to a better place and I know I don’t need the race to prove it. Now I’m going to spend my time running for enjoyment. I need to get back to the roots. I need to remember why I fell in love with this sport in the first place. I’m looking forward to this. I’ll think about my competitive come back around the end of January. And I’m already planning a comeback in nyc for next year.

I followed him during the race, and wrote to him, “I knew you were in trouble from your splits. I wish I knew how to make every race flow the way that some do, and especially not to get too pumped up. I’ve been running a lot longer than you have, and I haven’t figured that out.”

Herb was a casualty of the SSRMC blow-up that led to my leaving the Club, the result of a dispute as to what the Club’s direction was to be. While I ended up with Warren Street, Herb’s been running unattached. As he did for this year’s marathon.

I mention all of this because this morning I saw that Herb had posted a follow-up to his “Marathon disaster” post, and it’s quite another story. Herb reminds me of Robert, i.e., someone who’s not super-fast but who just loves to run and run and run. And run. While I was on Facebook I’d see Herb putting up these long runs at fast paces. He was primed.

But he also got smart. So that follow-up showed him to have run 3:14 and change (a BQ). He writes, “lessons learned. I got my BQ with 3:14:54. This time I did everything right.” More important, take a look at how evenly things went:

• 5 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:16.33
• 10 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:17.03
• 15 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:18.84
• 20 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:20.22
• Half-Marathon, Time: 01:36:15.00, Pace/mile: 00:07:20.83
• 25 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:22.62
• 30 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:22.06
• 35 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:23.35
• 40 Kilometers, Pace/mile: 00:07:25.75
• Finish: Time: 03:14:54.00, Pace/mile: 00:07:26.33

QED

“It’s a beautiful thing, when you can click the miles along.”

On November 3, 2007, I was at the finish line of the Men’s Olympic Marathon Trials in Central Park (thanks to former and current teammate Erin C (who also got me into the marathon in 2006) I had a VIP pass with access to a big tent at Tavern). Ryan Hall got the loudest ovation as he finished, but the second loudest went to Meb Keflezighi, who finished eighth and it was in appreciation for his Silver Medal at Athens. (KK also got a rousing welcome; we didn’t know of Ryan Shay’s death at the time.)

On Sunday, of course, Meb became the first American since Alberto Salazar, in 1982, to win the NYC Marathon. The New Yorker has a brief piece on him. It concludes:

“Cherish it,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing, when you can click the miles along. It’s a beautiful thing, and you better cherish it.”

Maybe that’s what makes the marathon so special.

Up North

Northern Westchester Trails

I came upon a page on the Leatherman’s Loop page that lists a whole bunch of trails in Northern Westchester (and Greenwich). Since my bailiwick is the Southern Part of the County, I don’t venture north (and, indeed, the point of WestchesterTrails is to let people down south that they needn’t go far for good trail running), I haven’t been on them (save for the Rockies). But it looks like there are loads more places than I knew of.

Racing at the Rockies: 5K, Nov. 7

The Second Annual Fall Rockies 5K will be held on Saturday, Nov. 7. I don’t know if I’ll make it, given my sore knee.

Last year’s race was pretty laid back. There should be a good deal more color than in the photo, but this is a good representation of the trail itself. Since the course includes the dreaded 13-Bridges Trail (yes, I’ve counted all 13), it’ll be a tough one.

Registration limited to 300, from the Visitors’ Center. This will be tricky to get to from Metro North.

Nov. 1: NYC Marathon/Added: Race in 60 Seconds

8:48: I just got in from a nice run. Six miles, knee a bit achy when I stopped. I don’t think I would have gone far in the marathon though. Weather, not perfect. A bit warmer/more humid than I’d like. There was slight rain earlier, but appears to be gone. Now for a shower then I’m going to plop down in front of the TV to watch the race. My bright idea: blog updates. We’ll see how that goes.

10:23: Athlete Tracker is great. Looks like through 10K 3 Warren Streeters — Stephane, Pascal, and Fabio — are running together, at about 39 flat. John Nelson is a bit farther back.

11:28: Strange to see Paula off the back. Hitting 24, can she come back? No. Meanwhile, sorry to see Hall gone. And Torres. But as they come back into Manhattan, maybe Meb.

Meanwhile my Warren Streeters are running pretty consistently and relatively close to one another. I am in the wish-I-was-there mode.

11:37: The coverage of the men’s race is awful. Let’s not focus on an American taking the lead.

11:55: Meb wins. Wow. Almost in tears here. Hall pulls up for 4th. But no more times for Pascal. Not good for our Masters team.

12:03: Someone pointed out on LetsRun that Meb made a cross coming down Cat Hill at the spot where Ryan Shay (whose No. 13 has been retired by NYRR) died, and a review of the tape shows that indeed he did.

1:21: Wow again. Looks like there was quite a bit of late race carnage. I’m not seeing anyone break 3, and some real late-race slowing.

Edited to add:

If you missed it, you can watch a good chunk of the race:

Thanks for the insights. They help put things in a bit of perspective as to how tough it was out there. (Wolve ran 3:42:08; he’s happy.)

I’ll note that Joan Benoit, wearing No. 152 (she’s 52) held tough, with a 2:49:09 for 17th overall, and, frankly, I doubt that I could have beaten her this time. (While she was on TV, she was passed by CPTC’s Alan Ruben, one of the top local 50+ers; he ran a 2:47 with an almost perfectly paced race.)

As I watched the closing stretch again, I loved seeing a black cop at 72nd Street going nuts when he saw Meb in his USA jersey come by. Not nuts, necessarily, but he was pretty pumped.

Within 10 minutes of the men’s start I happened on the website for the Marathon. The countdown clock for 2010 was already up, showing 370 days plus. The deadline is earlier this year. (The NYC Half is to be on March 21, and can qualify for NY notwithstanding the Jan. 31 deadline for all other races (except Boston).)

And Ryan Hall from the post-race presser:

Q. Your training in Mammoth, how often do you actually run with him?

RYAN HALL: We don’t train together a whole lot. We hooked up for a couple of long runs and stuff like that. Meb usually runs faster on easy days. Maybe I need to start running faster, I don’t know. But we have different workouts.

We did a couple of tempo runs together and stuff like that. But we live like 400 meters away from each other. So we’re practically neighbors.

Some Follow-Ups

Boston Closing Fast

I posted a while back on Boston and the impact of charity runners, expressing the view that insofar as a charity runner took the place of someone who qualified on time this was a bad thing. In a follow-up then, I said that Chris Russell thought that Boston, which traditionally closed pretty close to raceday, would likely close earlier than it had because of the influx of charity runners.

Comes news today (from a LetsRun thread) that an e-mail has been sent that, six months from raceday, the race is “rapidly approaching capacity.”

So it appears we have the conflict between a charity-runner and a BQer. I know I’d choose the latter over the former. Granted that BQs are soft, especially for us older folks, and that the race used to have a 2:50 male standard, but I know enough people who have worked very hard and are on the cusp of qualifying and I think they should get the chance to run. Let everyone with the BQ in the race, with, say, a Feb. deadline (as it is now, it appears that people with the qualifier will not get in) and then allocate the remaining available slots to charity-runners (and give them different bib colors if they don’t do that already). It’s the closest race we have to a meritocracy and it would be unfortunate — “a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham” — if a single runner who qualified and wanted to run couldn’t get in because of some four-hour guy running for Team-in-Training.

Velolib

I wrote about how wonderful the Velolibs — the bikes I saw all over town — were in my Report de Paris. Turns out they are not as universally popular as one would hope. According to an article in the Times, “Reality Proves a Setback for Cheap Bike Rentals in Paris,” there is resentment in some parts about them.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the rich, trendy urban middle-class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, police and sociologists say.

Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, “One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars,” referring to gangs of immigrant youth burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.

He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib’ vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glitzy side of Paris.

Speaking of Paris and vandals, incredibly there is opposition to those who would like to see graffiti removed from the buildings that line the High Line in lower Manhattan.

Dog Bites Man: Lance Armstrong is a Dick

Thanks to Tavia for this. Here’s her report on what was to be a Times forum with three great female marathoners — Waitz, Benoit, Kastor — that Lance Armstrong decided to crash. And the Times prostrated itself before him. The only person I know who’s met Armstrong is my brother. His assessment: he’s a jerk. Now that may be necessary to be the “Boss” of the peleton, but we don’t have to like it. Tavia softens on him, but this really was a dickish thing.

Of course now that I’m gone from Twitter, I missed being invited to a run with Armstrong tomorrow (although I was never among his followers). According to a LetsRun thread, “He’s in NY. He sent out a twitter message. He wants to meet Saturday morning at 9 AM at Niketown on 57th street. Should I go? What should I wear?”

No. 893: I’m only here for fun

[Updated: I canceled. Given the advice I received from some smart people (SB said, "From lessons learned, unless you compete for the Olympic Games, I would cancel, especially if you know you are not going to finish. However it could be just a minor ache.") and because I would give the same advise were I asked.) Factored in the hassle of getting my number tomorrow and getting to the start, the danger of the knee going early, the loss of the chance to watch the race, and the loss of an automatic for 2010.]

I admit it. I like the idea of a three-digit number. My plan: To enjoy running the first part of the race, particularly the crowd in Brooklyn, not worrying about anything except running relaxed, particularly given the complete absence of mileage in my legs. So my goal was to have fun and make it into Manhattan.

Alas, yesterday I tried to run through an ache in my left knee. Bothered me early, but then was gone. It has since been aching. Normally I would just take a couple of days off and get back. Now, however, its impact on Sunday looms large.

Add to that a change in NYRR policy. For guaranteed entry into the marathon, the HM-qualifier must be run by Jan. 31, instead of by May 1 as in years past. Since I haven’t run an HM since 2007, largely because of injuries, I don’t have a time, although the standard is pretty soft for 50+ (1:40). If I cancel the Marathon, I have my 2010 spot covered. Still, I figure getting the qualifier in January in the Manhattan HM will be pretty easy, assuming I can run.

So as of Thursday night, the question is whether to cancel. I can do it as long as I send something post-marked by October 31, i.e., Saturday. This has been aggravating/agitating me. I realize that there’s a good chance that the pain is psychosomatic.

A pimp’s convention?

Morning’s Not Broken

I’m able to get out in the morning now that I’ve moved my office to White Plains. I’ve long been an after-work runner, but with night falling earlier and earlier, and notwithstanding that I now have a treadmill, I’m relishing the chance to get out in the sometimes brisk morning air. Even better, I’ve been making regular runs to the Nature Study Trail (my page photo is where that trail meets the Twin Lakes trail).

I consider this “my” trail. I’m on it within ten minutes of leaving home, passing over and by bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Hutchinson River and Cross-County Parkways.

I ran into and briefly with CNR’s coach Adrienne Wald last week, not knowing she would cooking up a storm on the front-page of the Times a few days later, in “Plodders Have a Place, but Is It in a Marathon?” (She said, “It’s a joke to run a marathon by walking every other mile or by finishing in six, seven, eight hours,” And, “It used to be that running a marathon was worth something — there used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore. Now it’s, ‘How low is the bar?’” I won’t address that issue at this point, but I will say that Adrienne, of WTC, does speak her mind.)

We ran past, as I’ve done on my own, someone I assume is a Kenyan running for Iona College. Talk about feeling old-and-slow.

So I’ve been mixing that type of run with my normal road run along the BRP path (on which I saw Jonathan S. loping along with enviable ease last week as well). There’s something peculiar about running there in the morning, see the cars heading up to White Plains, knowing I’ll be there in about an hour’s time.

I admit that it’s not been super easy to hop out of bed, and I’m not talking about pre-dawn. There are those — former teammates (and relay-mates) Jerri Lynn and Dave and Tavia come to mind — who seem to be able to (although I doubt it’s that easy for them), but I’ve found asking myself Charlie Spedding’s question — “How Much Do I Want It?” — has been doing the trick.

So home for a shower, dress, and out the door. I was a bit tired the first few times, but that seems to have passed as well. It is quite different, though, to have the run done with as I face the day. Quite nice.