Author Archives: lkewing313

The 200 bird challenge

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Just as I was contemplating a year without a marathon, the woman sitting opposite me at the potluck dinner after the Kings County Christmas Bird Count mentioned the “200 bird challenge.”

The basic idea is to see 200 species of birds in New York state over the course of a year.

The beauty of the challenge, as she explained it, is that 200 birds is more than the casual New York birder can expect to see in one or two favored birding destinations. It’s a big enough number that you’re going to have to venture out to a variety of different habitats. And yet, it’s not such a crazy big number that getting there means putting the rest of your life on hold while you chase after every rare bird report from Montauk to the Quebec border to the shores of Lake Erie. (One birding friend has already told me that I should be able to surpass 200 birds in NYC alone.) Continue reading →

Lutheran Halal

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This is my Brooklyn.

Go ahead and try to wrap your mind around the concept of Lutheran halal. (Spoiler: it’s not really cuisine prepared according to the dictates of both Lutheran and Muslim dietary laws, but the name of a coffee shop by Lutheran Medical Center.)  It’s as Brooklyn as . . . well, as a large extended family, all dressed up, the women wearing hijabs, smiling for a group photograph in front of Junior’s before their traditional ‘Eid al-Adha feast of pastrami and cheesecake. Continue reading →

Chasing Boston (part 10 – the end)

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Still smiling after 22 miles - a personal record (Photo credit: Eric Brooks)

Still smiling after 22 miles – a personal record (Photo credit: Eric Brooks)

Well, I did it. I finished the New York City Marathon in 3:58:50, well under my Boston qualifying time of 4:10:00.

I’m not sure which makes me happier this morning: the fact that I’ll be joining Kathrine Switzer and a whole bunch of my friends in Boston on April 17, 2017, or the fact that I don’t need to run another marathon for almost a year and a half.

I didn’t achieve my most ambitious time goal, which is OK. Nor did I achieve my goal of negative splits. If I wanted to be hard on myself, as I often do, I’d describe the execution of my race plan as “start slow and finish slower.” If I were to cut myself some slack, I’d point out that this was the most evenly-paced marathon I’ve ever run, and that five of my fastest miles came in the second half.

I must be getting soft in my old age, because I’m inclined to cut myself some slack.

Besides – given my adventures in the medical tent at the finish line, no one could accuse me of not giving this race everything I had.

Here, then, is my race report.

Continue reading →

Chasing Boston (part 8 – race goals)

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My race gear, at least, is ready.

My race gear, at least, is ready.

So what exactly are my goals for Sunday’s race (other than qualifying for Boston, of course)? I realize I’ve been a little vague in these posts. Obviously, I have goals – but publicly committing to them is scary. Will the marathon gods punish me for my hubris?

Scary or not, it’s time to come clean. Continue reading →

All my marathon anxieties (now in one convenient post)

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Here’s hoping my legs hold up better than the tape I used to customize my singlet.

Six days until the New York City Marathon! Time to relax, rest up, eat right and . . . freak out. As I write this, all my marathon anxieties are jostling one another in my head as they vie for the title of Biggest, Baddest Worry of Them All.

Here, in no particular order (because the order keeps changing), are my marathon anxieties. Continue reading →

One Brooklyn runner’s totally idiosyncratic spectator’s guide to the TCS New York City Marathon

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Welcome to Brooklyn, baby.

Welcome to Brooklyn, baby.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Originally published in October 2015, this post has been updated to reflect business closings (a sad fact of life for restaurants everywhere, perhaps especially in gentrifying sections of Brooklyn) as of September 2018. 

This is for you, marathon spectators! Thanks for listening to our whining, humoring our obsession, pretending to understand our talk of intervals and tempo runs and split times and generally putting up with us throughout our months of training. As if all that isn’t enough, you’ve further agreed to stand outside for hours in whatever weather November 1 brings. Some of you have traveled long distances and invested significant sums of money to be here on marathon day.

You deserve the race of your life.

I’ve been a spectator along the marathon course about as many times as I’ve actually run the race, so I know a little bit about spectating. The main thing you need to know is that it’s great; prepare yourself for a wild, raucous, exciting time. It can also be a little tiring. It may be cold. Cheering for random strangers will leave you thirsty and hoarse. At some point, you will get hungry.

Since I’m a runner who gets cold and thirsty and hungry a lot, and who uses many of her runs to explore Brooklyn neighborhoods (including, of late, obsessively running portions of the marathon course), I can help. And I want to help, because your cheers are what make the New York City Marathon, in my biased opinion, the greatest race in the world. Continue reading →

Chasing Boston (part 7 – final training recap)

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Less time running = more time to customize my singlet with kinesiotape

Less time running = more time to customize my singlet with kinesiotape

Less than two weeks until the New York City Marathon – which means the hay is in the barn, as they say. (I have no idea why that agrarian image has become the go-to metaphor for marathon training, but it’s what everyone says. Even here in Brooklyn, where there is little hay and few barns.)

From here on out, nothing I do is going to increase my fitness in any appreciable way. I can still mess myself up, though, which seems a little unfair. The balancing act between now and November 1 involves:

  1. Cutting back on mileage enough to allow my body to rest and recover.
  2. Maintaining mileage sufficient to satisfy my body’s craving for consistency and routine.
  3. Continuing with workouts at marathon goal pace, intended to drill it into my overly enthusiastic legs and my traitorous, self-deluding brain. (The latter is the bigger challenge.)
  4. Not tripping and hurting myself.
  5. Not going crazy.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my training. Continue reading →

“No Bra Day” – huh?

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I just learned that October 13 is “No Bra Day.” Back in 2008, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I might have missed this – Facebook was for kids then, not middle-aged women, and Twitter . . . what the hell was this Twitter thing?

But today, not only is “No Bra Day” a “trending topic” – I actually kind of know what a “trending topic” is. And so, judging by the angry reactions I’m seeing, do many of my breast cancer sisters.

The weird thing about “No Bra Day” is that no one seems to actually be behind it. Continue reading →

Safety first!

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High-visibility race shirts

High-visibility race shirts

Is this a trend? The t-shirts from my last two New York Road Runners races are crossing-guard green and highway-worker orange. This has caused some grumbling among certain runners of my acquaintance, who – being New Yorkers and all – prefer black, or at least gray. But Eric heartily approves. He is, after all, the man who showed his love for me by festooning my bike with day-glo yellow tape one day as a surprise. Continue reading →