Chicago Marathon? Hey. Hi there. Uh, what are you doing?

Posted on January 31, 2011 by threlkeld

What is wrong with the organizers of the Chicago Marathon? After heat-related hospitalizations and deaths marred the 2007 race, you’d think they’d be on their toes. Yet the 2011 edition, which is eight months away, has already featured two huge, easily avoidable missteps.

Misstep 1: The race will take place the day after Yom Kippur, for which observers are required to fast for 24 hours. Sure, you can race a marathon after fasting. But don’t expect a PR; there’s a good chance that it will be an awful experience too. I’m not Jewish. Nor am I Christian. I don’t think any holiday should dictate a race director’s decisions. But Yom Kippur is major — it’s kind of like failing to notice Christmas, and then scheduling the race for that day, and then saying, “Sorry! We spent years planning this — and did not look at a calendar during those years — and things can’t be changed now.” I understand the consternation.

Misstep 2: You can register for the race online, but registration starts at midnight tonight CST. Boston’s 2011 race filled up in a mere eight hours (and that’s only because a broken registration link sent runners off into the weeds for several hours). Will Chicago fill up this fast? I don’t know. I guess if I want to be certain of getting in then I have to stay up until 1 o’fucking clock in the morning on a weeknight to register. Or get up at a reasonable hour and hope there are spots left.

Why, Chicago Marathon? Why? If you were hoping to generate excitement by opening up registration at midnight, then guess what? You’ve failed. Instead, you’ve generated anxiety and resentment. I haven’t even registered for your race yet and I don’t trust you to care about my experience as a customer. Nor do I like you all that much. Nice job.

Filed under: racing | Tagged: | 6 Comments »

A few minutes with Adriana Pirtea

Posted on July 31, 2010 by threlkeld

Adriana Pirtea, 29, was a surprise showing at the Mini 10K press event. She wasn’t on the roster, so I hadn’t researched her. But I knew three things about her: she’s originally from Romania, she lives and trains in Colorado (Fort Collins), and she was nipped in the last 50 meters by Berhane Adere at the 2007 Chicago Marathon, where Pirtea’s mistake was celebrating her win too early at what, up until that moment, had been a dream debut at the distance. Since dredging up a bad memory is a terrible way to get someone to open up to you, I decided to not mention Chicago (even though I was dying to). Instead, I decided try out some of the more oddball questions I had, to see what I’d get. One piece of exciting news: Pirtea is going to become a US citizen in November, so we’ll have another very fast import soon.

10th, London 2008, with a 2:28.

What do you think about when you’re racing?
Many things. When you’re in a race, you know how you’ve prepared and what kind of speed you want to go. If you’re thinking about the marathon, then it’s a long way. I actually have almost no time to think of anything else but just to keep myself in the rhythm.

So you’re in the moment when you’re running.
Yes. I just watch my competitors. If I struggle a little bit, I try to come back. If I go too fast, just go back in the rhythm so I don’t waste my energy too much. That’s kind of it. It’s almost like you think too much of the race over the moment. People say, “Do you think of everything you’ve done in your life in the marathon?” It’s not like that. It’s just keeping your body motivated and being able to keep the pace up to the end of the race.

Are you breaking the race up into different sections, or are you running mile by mile?
You know, it depends. A couple races were such a tactical race, very slow. Sometimes you feel very fit and trained. This might be a mistake, to stay at a slow pace. It happened to me a couple of times, and I blamed myself. Why didn’t I go faster, to make my own pace? But sometimes a race can be a fartlek, where people try to get rid of the other ones. Most of the time, it’s a good race if — like Magdalena [in Rotterdam] — you can be pretty steady all the time, if possible.

When did you start running in Romania?
I was 17 years old when I started running. I started improving very quickly and I got a chance to get a scholarship to run here [for University of Texas, El Paso] just a few years after I started running.

Did you specialize in a certain distance when you first started?
I kind of jumped from one to another one, because that’s the way the championships were going there. So I’d be running 1500 or 3000 indoor and then a half marathon and then 5000. So all over.

Do you have a favorite?
I have a favorite when I run well.

It’s funny how that happens.
Yes. Because I did my debut a couple years ago in the marathon. It was a great marathon for me. And so I liked it that day. A year later, when I didn’t do too well — don’t ask me, because I was like, “This is not for me.” But everybody’s saying, “This is for you. You have to go for the marathon.” I used to love being on the track sometimes, and right now [I’m] losing the speed. So I have to stick with the marathon and half marathon right now, because that’s probably where I can perform better.

If you couldn’t be a runner, do you have other things you’d like to do?
I think I just love running. Before I started running, I was a dancer. I was dancing for my school. That was a really cool thing. I started running because my teammate had to lose some weight. She was about to get kicked off the team. So I said, “I’m going with you. We’re going to go run, you’re going to lose weight, and you’re going to be back there.” When I took her there, she didn’t want to run. She was embarrassed.

So my dad talked to the coach and he’s like, “Okay, you have to run now.” And so I just glued to the group of guys and stayed with them and I was so relaxed. And they were saying, “Slow down…” and I was like, “No, I feel good.” At the second training session they said, “Uh, we have a cross country race in two weeks. Do you want to run it?” It was a short distance, only 1500 meters. And I was like, “Okay, I’m running.” And I won the race so easily. And they said, “You have to stay in this sport.” And I said, “Okay, I’m staying.”

I think that’s called “destiny.”
Yes, I think so too.

Filed under: central park, elites, inspiration, racing, reading, resources | Tagged: , , , , , | 3 Comments »