Race Report: Joe Kleinerman 10K

Date: January 4; 8:00 am 

Distance: 10K

Place: Central Park, NY, NY

Weather: 48 F

Finishers: 5,160 (2,745 Men/2,415 Women) 

Offical time / pace: 1:17 / 12:24min/mi

This race is named in honor of Joe Keinerman, who was one of the founders of the Road Runners Club of America and the New York Road Runners Club. It kind of makes sense that this race typically is the first NYRR race of the year. 

I've finally done it and run my worst race EVER!!!

Since I am still training for the Fred Lebow Half Marathon in a couple of weeks, I decided to make this race a long run. The plan was to run 3 miles before the race, run the 10K race, and follow the race with another 3 miles. Easy breezy, right?

I started the 3-mile pre-race run and noticed a stinging pain in the lower left part of my back. Right then, I knew this was going to be a hot mess of a run. In addition to my back issue, I was having some digestive issues. Before leaving the apt, I had to poop twice. Instead of running three miles to and around Central Park, I decided to do more stretches and walk to the start.

Ok, I'm in my corral (letter I for this racing season) and waiting for the sound of the start gun. Actually, I don't know if NYRR uses a start gun. Within 400 meters of starting, nature called AGAIN. Damnit, if I did not have to take ANOTHER dump. That's three poops within 1.5 hours. The weird thing is poop wasn't "liquidity" so I ruled out diarrhea. Oh, portapotties are gross. 

During the first mile, my stomach was not feeling too hot at all and I was belching . . . a lot. After passing the first fluid station (a little past Mile 1), I had to stop and puke. Just great, I have breakfast coming out of one end and the previous night's dinner coming out of the other end. 

I still tried to power through, but then my back really started to hurt. At this point, I pretty much was over the race and almost requested an Uber to take my puking, vomiting, injured a** home. 

Side note: There is something about the end of December and the beginning of January that makes my back injury flare-up. Maybe it's being a couch potato during my Christmas staycations. 



Back to the race, which I probably should have taken a DNF. As I started to approach Mile 2, once again, I had ANOTHER urge to poop. Portapotties that have been used by most of the race field are the things that nightmares are made of. At that point, I decided to jog 0.5 miles and walk 0.25 miles until the finish. I mean, there was no point pushing myself in my current state. 

For the most part, that plan was going ok. Another runner that saw me puke earlier gave me props for fighting through the race. I mean, she looked like she was fighting through her race too. The other runner may have given me a pep talk a bit too soon because I puked AGAIN around Mile 4. Maybe the second puke was due to reliving what I saw in the portapotty and smelling old horse poop on the road. This section of Central Park is often populated with horse carriages. Although there were no horsey carriages on the road, the smell always lingers. Maybe it's the horse oppression that made me sick. 

After all of that, I finally made it to the finish. Although I felt like crap and did feel like I finished a race, I'm glad that powered through . . . to the best of my ability. 

Hey, at least temperature was pretty mild for the beginning of January in NYC. 

I guess there is nowhere I can go but up from here. I just gotta keep moving forward for the rest of the 2020 race season. 

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