New Haven Road Race Turns 31

The annual Labor Day jaunt around New Haven is one of the preeminent races in the Northeast. Only eight years younger than the NYC Marathon, the 20k New Haven Road Race also doubles as the national championship race in that distance and draws plenty of big-name runners each year.

And on a local level, it's just a great way to see the city in all its variety, from the boutique shops on Broadway to the harbor waterfront along Long Wharf to the sidewalk Spanish of the Fair Haven neighborhood to the quiet woods of East Rock Park.

Monday was the 31st running of the race, featuring a special tribute to Ryan Shay, the young distance runner who died in the Olympic trials last November in Central Park. His father, Joe, said a few words before this race, thanking the running community for its support. Ryan was a past participant in the New Haven race, and his wife won the women's competition last year.

Then with the crack of the gun, the runners were off. The course goes through just about every neighborhood in the city, and in addition to the official water stops, many residents set up their own unofficial stations to pass water to the runners and cheer them on. The route is mostly flat, with some gentle ups and downs, which makes for a fast course. World records have been set here.

The sun, however, is the great equalizer, and turning up East Street somewhere around mile eight, it was tempting to reach an arm out toward the men standing outside the corner bar with their beers and hope they'd hand off a bottle — liquid defeat.

But just as the twists and turns and heat and sore feet start to wear a runner down, suddenly the route turns into the shaded East Rock Park. A short uphill gives way to a longer descent, providing a burst of confidence that culminates in a left turn across the Mill River past a band of bagpipers and toward the final straightaway down Whitney Avenue.

Finally the finish line appears in the middle of the New Haven Green, and post-race refreshments range from bananas and bagels to little ice cream cups. And as a final reward, perhaps knowing what temptations had been resisted along the way, a beer distributor has a van set up serving runners free cups of a deep-amber brew. Beer never tasted so good.

Manhattan Rack Attack and Times Square

Staring at a train station bike rack on a recent Saturday morning, I found myself in a predicament.

I had a bike and here was a bike rack, but lo and behold, I had forgotten my bike lock. To make matters worse, I was catching a train to work and didn't want to be late. What to do?

Thinking quickly — perhaps too quickly — I decided just to take the bike along with me from New Haven to Grand Central. I never had taken the bike on the train before but had seen others do it and didn't worry too much about it. The bike fit nicely in the entryway on the opposite side of the station platforms, and I was able to wedge it in so it wouldn't fall.

But a more troubling dilemma confronted me when I got to the city. I figured I'd just sneak the bike in with me at work, but the security guy at my building blocked my way. "You can't bring that in," he said. "Bikes aren't allowed." It's a policy I was aware of but didn't think they'd enforce, especially as I pleaded for leniency.

No mercy.

The result was that I spent my first hour of work in a panic over the fate of my bike, which I had to leave propped up against a bike rack on Sixth Avenue lock-less, free for anyone to snatch if they simply noticed it wasn't tethered to any permanent object. After checking in with my co-workers, I excused myself to rush down 46th Street to a bike shop and pick up a new bike lock, about $25, and preserve my treasured vehicle. It had lasted a half hour without getting stolen, so I counted myself fortunate.

The upside of this story is that after work I had some time to kill, so I decided to venture around on the bicycle, my first time doing so in the city. I still wanted to get home at a reasonable hour and therefore limited my Manhattan excursion to a short loop, which just happened to take me through Times Square.

The excitement of biking down Broadway on a Saturday evening with the giant digital advertisements flashing and tourists shuffling around in every direction is hard to express. It's impossible to kick into high gear in that traffic, yet there is a feeling of speed and intensity when passing through that famous crossroads on a bike rather than strolling on foot. Almost made my absentmindedness worth the extra effort.

Face Full of Dirt Part 2

It has been an abysmal week or two for my marathon training. Missed days. Shortened runs. Slow paces. And one wild Monday night spent checking out a band at the Bowery Ballroom, which, though terribly fun, set my body back a few days.

Then there is the pesky root-and-rock-covered path in New Haven's East Rock park that attacked me again on Thursday. Head over heals again. Scraped up my knee again, this time enough that I had to take off my T-shirt to soak up the blood.

It's such a great route through the woods along the Mill River, but I might have to give it a pass for a while until I figure out what's going wrong. The knee can't take another spill like that, and I'm running out of T-shirts.

Breaking the Rules: The Lance Armstrong Program

I never imagined marathon training would be a bed of roses, but I also had hoped the will to compete and the potential shame of failing would cure me of my training irregularities.

Not quite.

The way things are going, I'm gonna have to defend myself by saying I'm in the Lance Armstrong program. Which might not sound like a bad program — if you're training for a bicycle race through the mountains of France. But Armstrong was notoriously ill-prepared when he ran his first marathon, the NYC in 2006. I was perched at 90th Street and Central Park for that race and saw him come around the bend, looking haggard with salty sweat caked on his face but still moving along.

Armstrong came in just under three hours, which was quite a feat considering that after the race his ex-wife revealed that his longest training run hadn't even been the distance of a half marathon and he hadn't really stuck to the program.

But a guy like Lance can pull off something like that. A mere mortal like myself keeps going over in my mind the list of missteps:

• Consistency is lacking. I've missed a few scheduled runs, including a long run and a tempo. Will I be able to keep up with more intense workouts down the stretch?

• They say you should get an extra minute of sleep for every mile you run a week. By that measure, I should be getting an extra 20-30 minutes a night. But with my crazy work schedule, I typically end up missing sleep rather than getting more.

• To be honest, I still haven't done any research on marathon nutrition. I've heard a runner needs more calories. And a well-balanced diet, high in carbohydrates and protein. It's the finer points that leave me puzzled. Were the two slices of pepperoni pizza I had for dinner on Tuesday a boost to or drag on my energy level? How much ice cream is allowed per week? Per day? Does a half bag of potato chips contain any health benefits? If I have an extra piece of fruit for breakfast, will it matter that I had to skip lunch?

• I don't really drink alcohol during the week. So if I choose to over-consume on the weekends, is that really going to slow me down? (I'm mostly sober by my Monday long run.)

So many questions, and only 11 weeks until the NYC Marathon. Maybe I should take a nap.

Face Full of Dirt

New Haven can be a rough city, and I'm not talking about the gunshots, crumbling neighborhoods and packs of panhandlers.

I'm talking about the giant tree roots on the trails at the base of East Rock. One of them attacked me Monday about four miles into a 10-miler and knocked me down on the puddle-covered path. I wasn't far from the waterfall at the north end and could have shouted to the summer camp kids there for help: "Help, help, camp kids, help, runner down!" Instead, I jumped up, inspected the wounds on my wrist, forearm and both knees and decided that I wasn't mortally injured and had been maintaining too good of a pace to lag now.

Unlike the trails up the hill, the trails around East Rock are flat and meandering, an ideal running route through the city park's gentle woods. And other than the roots and rocks, there aren't many obstacles, though, I admit, that playground turtle by Orange Street gives me the creeps.

New York City Opens Its Streets, Some

Any runner with a will and a way will be foolish to pass up the opportunity to run in the middle of the street in Manhattan the next three Saturday mornings.

Running in the middle of the street? Wouldn't that be the definition of foolish?

Any other Saturday morning, yes. But Mayor Bloomberg and his people have wrested parts of Lafayette, Park, Fourth Avenue and 72nd Street away from motorized traffic and will give them over to runners, pedestrians, bicyclists, mimes, chalk artists, street vendors and the rest of the metro menagerie from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Aug. 9, 16 and 23.

This means, you can complete a traffic-free run of about seven miles from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park on a stretch of pavement that at other times would be overrun by taxis, trucks and an array of other gas guzzlers.

This closed-street initiative follows the failure of Bloomberg's ambitious congestion pricing plan for Midtown Manhattan and parts to the south, which died at the hands of Sheldon Silver and the rest of the do-nothing Albany mafia. So creating a traffic-free route through Manhattan for a total of 18 hours in the summer (when New Yorkers desert Manhattan on weekends anyway) is kind of a sad consolation prize. But if this works out, who knows, maybe Bloomberg will find a way to close streets across the whole island, and for more than a Saturday morning.

For more information on the city's Summer Streets program, click here.

Downtown Among the Elms

There are many methods for measuring the New Haven Green, but none of them have I employed. Not yet at least.

By sight, I figure the Green to be about three-fourths of a mile around (four loops for a 5k) if you were to run the full square, which involves crossing Temple Street, therefore a risk of red light. Sticking to one side or the other would avoid traffic and still offer a nice loop, a scenic alternative to the high school track or indoor treadmill.

Of the two sides of the Green, the east end is preferable. The dirt path under the elm trees feels like a proper park route, whereas the west end, with its assortment of homeless bums and pigeons, is a bit rougher and a bit too close to Yale. And as I recall, no dirt path.

I could have looped it with the Garmin or swung through on my bike and clocked the mileage or else simply plotted it on the Web. But I haven't really run the Green until this morning, when I threw a mini loop into the mix to help round out an eight-miler on the north side of town. A pleasant loop in the heart of downtown — worth adding to the roster as a lazy option for a shorter run.