Frontrunners Open Meet (Heeeyyy!)

The rugged crew of myself, Arjun, Alex and Claire left Baltimore yesterday and drove for four hours in the pouring rain, arriving at the 168th Street Armory just around 5:15 pm. The song playing on the overhead system was "Careless Whisper" by Wham!. I should have known something was up, but didn't think anything of it. Then we registered. Now I'm starting to get a clue. I wish I had put two and two together; in Baltimore there is a group of runners called the Frontrunners, which is a gay social running club. My dumb ass didn't think that the group would be a national organization. So sure enough, we were running at a gay indoor track meet.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

Actually the meet was one of the best I've been to. Good music, clean, I would expect nothing less from them. It was a small meet, pretty low-key but good enough competition to ensure that Arjun wasn't going to run away with anything.

We all did the mile, Arjun got into the seeded heat and held it DOWN. Splits of 70 (long quarter), 68, 70, 63 put him at a 4:31.91 mile and 3rd place overall. For his efforts he won a $25 gift certificate for a Broadway show or Paul Mitchell haircare products or something. In our heat, Alex raced very well, improving on his previous performances by dropping a 4:49.80 full mile. I had a good race for me, and despite tying up, managed to come through in 5:00.99. Disappointed that I couldn't have just kicked a little bit harder to break 5, but whatever. Claire ran a strong race after a fast opening quarter, and finished in 6:01.93.

We all felt pretty good after that race, and honestly I think I would have run a good 2 mile about 5 minutes after the mile. We did a short cooldown/warmup upstairs in the facility, and prepared for the 2 mile. Much less time in between races than at PG. In fact, we were done shortly after 8:30, so this was much nicer.

Arjun got into the "seeded" heat of the 2 mile, and looked like he was just chilling as he came through in 10:45.33. The winner of the race, a student at Hofstra (9:36) was looking to break 9, but was out there all by himself. Still, very impressive. Alex and I were in the second heat, and Alex did a good job at racing the race, while I just sat back and tried to run my even splits. I felt good through the mile in 5:25 or so (long, with the extra 18 meters) and finally felt like I was going to pop with about 1200m to go. I took it easy for a moment, letting my laps slip significantly, but was able to pick it up on the last lap for a fairly even race, finishing in 10:52.42. Alex ran a good race, finishing in a new TWSS record 10:40.20. Claire picked up third in her race, running a 13:08.27.

The humor in the meet was definitely the entertainment factor of being at a gay social runners' meet, and the old man official who let us know that we were at a gay meet, and that there's nothing wrong with it, but that he gives them nicknames cause they run around and smack each other's asses. Also, Claire was late for the start of the 2mile, so he is calling her name, and then her team. "Claire Lears, from Team TWSS. What does this even mean? I don't know what this means, maybe someone can explain it to me."

We did not explain it to him.

So we finished, all pretty pleased with our efforts, and got back in the car after a quick pizza stop. I really do love going to NYC, and the Armory was so much nicer than I even remembered it. Banked track, seating, not ghetto. We made it back in a little over 3 hours, still raining most of the time, and it was still raining this morning so I didn't ride.