I hope everyone had a fun weekend! Saturday morning I ran the NYRR Al Gordon Classic 4 mile race, in my own backyard! (Well, Prospect Park, but it’s pretty close). I’m so used to working out the MTA’s chaotic weekend schedule and trying to get to random start lines in Central Park for early morning NYRR races that it was even more delightful to run less than half a mile to the start line on Saturday.
While I was attempting to keep warm in the starting corral, the announcers were talking about Al Gordon, the namesake of the race. Gordon began running marathons when he was 80 years old and continued running up until his death at the ripe old age of 107. So, for anyone who thinks it’s too late to get fit or take up a new sport, I present to you… Al Gordon. When I got home, I googled him and it seems he was something of a legend in the world of finance. He worked on Wall Street during the 1929 stock-market crash and helped to rebuild one of the trading firms that seemed doomed to be a casualty of the crash. He was apparently well-respected by employees and peers alike and told a reporter once that he made sure his words and actions would guarantee no-one would think of him as “that greedy, old bastard”. He sounded awesome.
I thought for sure I was going to run a great race. I was shooting for a sub 33 minute time (8:15 minute miles or faster) and based on how fast my training runs have been, I felt like that was definitely attainable. The weather was just perfect for a race – it was chilly (as you can see by the picture of everyone hugging themselves at the starting line, below) and very lightly drizzling. I’d done a difficult yoga class the day before and actually wanted a hard run to kind of shake out the soreness in my muscles.
