Wall Street Run

Today was the Wall Street Run. It was a 5K down in the financial district, which was pretty cool. The only trouble was getting there on time. I had a really tough time getting out of work, but fortunately the subways ran really well for me and I got there with time to spare. A friend of mine came down to cheer, and we met ShoreTurtle downtown.


There seemed to be about a million runners roaming around. The final count was 4433, but that didn't include the walkers. (It was a run/walk.) There was probably close to 8 or 9 thousand people participating. There were also a lot of corporate teams, which was also cool, since they all had on matching team t-shirts.


The race was cool because of its location, but not really good for racing. It was way too crowded, and very difficult to navigate. There were also a lot of turns. I hadn't planned to run too fast, but I did pick up speed as the race went on. I wasn't really worried about my time, but it felt good.

One annoying thing was that the course was short. ShoreTurtle mapped it out on Gmaps beforehand, so I know it was supposed to be a full 5K. There was this one part of the course where everyone cut through the courtyard of some building. Nobody ran on the road. I'm wondering if that was part of the problem.

Here's the race mapped out beforehand.


Here's what my Garmin came up with. (Obviously it doesn't work so well surrounded by skyscrapers!)


ShoreTurtle's footpod came up with around 3.0 miles. In any case, these were my splits:

Mile 1 - 9:05. Given the crowd, that seemed faster than expected.
Mile 2 - 6:50. Yeah, right. I knew it was short, but I figured mile 3 would compensate.
Mile 3 - 7:37. So much for compensating.

Net time - 24:13.
Net pace - 7:48.

I'm glad I didn't break my PR with this short course. I would have had to mark up my race history records with all sorts of asterisks.

The baggage area was right on the river, and I snapped a great picture of this (almost) sunset after the race.


Afterwards, we went out to dinner. I don't have the greatest sense of direction, but we eventually made it there. I more than made up for any calories burnt with that dinner. Check out the "homemade onion rings".


When I came home, there was an email saying the pictures from the Mother's Day's Race was ready. I was looking forward to those, because there was a spot where I was totally in the clear, and I saw the guy take a good picture. It didn't show up, so I'm guessing my number was obscured. When I have time, I'll look through the "lost and found". In the meantime, here's the official "finisher's photograph".


By the way, these last two races were my last two as an M32.

As of tomorrow, I'll be an M33.