L2B, i'm very happy to hear that your knee is holding up so well, and it sounds like a good couple of weeks for the rest of you, too.
over 50 and naia champ, very nice marathons. dozens of 50+ under 3 hours in seoul? all i can say is wow!
my strongest connection to NYCM this year is my running buddy who purposefully slowed down her final eight miles to run in the glorious company of tegla loroupe (see
http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanprose/6324393999/lightbox/
and
http://www.runnersworld.com/photo/nyc-marathon-cp/
). katie, who in her words "jogged" a 2:55, had never been to NYC before; she just soaked in the experience and had a ball -- way to go, girlfriend!
oops. i guess i've let a week and a half roll by, much of it in heavy-duty recovery mode, and haven't yet reported on my most recent 50-mile trail race. the highlight of the weekend in ipswich, ma, was my husband completing his first attempt at the distance -- this weekend was for him. the race was four rounds of a lovely 12.5-mile wooded trail, lightly rolling, intermittently covered with penetrating rocks, and included one wide (imagine the width of a six-lane highway) creek crossing per loop. there was also a marathon option, which several people from our area ran, and as i came in to the finish they reported that my fella had just headed out for his fourth loop feeling good; his final loop was his fastest and happiest.
as for me, my first and second loops were my fastest and happiest, most likely because i had convivial company. i went through a bad stretch in loop three, during which i kept up my prior loop's unfortunate habit of falling (what's with that?!?) and added in a somewhat off-kilter digestive system. by mile 34 or 35, all that stuff settled down and i got into a groove again, which persisted nicely until four miles from the finish. i had just passed the nationally ranked (young and very friendly) woman i have finished a bit behind in a couple of 50Ks when i missed a turn on the intricate but expertly marked trail. soon i found myself face to face with a fella i had called back from a missed turn on loop three, and he assured me he was now going the right way. after re-covering a mile of trail i had just traversed, i pulled away and soon repassed the usually fast woman who was by then walking (obviously she was having a bad day). then what did i do? made another wrong turn. ugh! and the trail i took was much lovelier than the correct one, too. another three-or-so minutes lost and then on to the finish, although the only person to get ahead of me in the interim was the man with whom i had shared reorienting duties.
in the end, i was third woman (the first broke the course record she set a couple of years ago), first masters, and took a good 45 minutes off the 50+ women's course record. my time (8:32) was okay and i finished feeling strong -- both of these are a blessing considering the injuries i've dealt with beginning in may. yet, i was frustrated by falling more times than i cared to count and then getting off course twice. but i won't complain because it was a perfect day to spend in the woods, even if much of it was with numb feet (people who wanted to change shoes after loop one couldn't undo their frozen laces!). for me, this plus the rocks translated into bruised, swollen forefeet (picture a baby's pudgy feet) through much of the week, although i'm back to an hour and a half on trails daily by now, but still no long runs, and my husband is trying to work through the IT band problems he incurs whenever he goes longer than 20-ish miles.