Empire State of Mind

New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothing you can't do, now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you, let's hear it for New York

Let's hear it for our little queens (and king) of the Empire State - Christine Ramsey, Melissa Bosslet and Andrew Jaffe, who all ran amazingly well at the NYC Marathon. It truly is the biggest stage in the world, there is just no other race like it.

I was getting psyched to see the email alerts from Chrissie's splits, where she was hovering around 6:16/mile for the first half (1:22:13), and then from 25k-30k where she must have been ripping low 6's because she dropped her average from 6:16.xx to 6:14.xx. Then my phone died, as it usually does these days, and we just had to wait. We could count the number of women on pretty much two hands before Chrissie came blazing by. As we stood at the 400m to go banner, cheering endlessly for our girl, people around us were amazed we knew someone who was that far up. Godsey said he saw Chrissie as she got passed by Meb on the TV feed (hey - he did that to most of us this year at XC Nats!).

She finished at 2:44:37, easily crushing her previous best of 2:52:34 from Philly Marathon 2007. More importantly, she finished 12th Female OVERALL and was the 4th American woman to cross the line. This immediately put her into "baller status" and gave her the hands down win for Purple Drink Athlete of the Week.

With the 30 minute head start that she received being an elite athlete, we had almost exactly 30 minutes to wait until Andrew "Beef Strokemoff" Jaffe came through at 2:45:36. Another PR -7 minutes, to be exact - in just his 3rd marathon. He finished 236th overall.

Melissa Bosslet/Majumdar was racing her first marathon in YEARS, and after her spectacular half in September, was really looking to make big things happen. She continued training well in light of a wedding and honeymoon, but she picked up one of those little nagging injuries, and it curtailed her training for most of the last month. She went into the race positive, however, and while it wasn't quite what she expected of herself, she ran a 3:08:30, finished 87th Female and we were all super psyched to see her go by. We are often our toughest critics, but I know she is pleased with the effort.

Believe it or not, other people raced this weekend too! Here's a recap:

Helen Klein 50 Mile: I don't remember what time Collin called me on Saturday, but I was out celebrating my favorite holiday and listened to the 10 minute long voicemail the next day. He's not just a long typer, my friends. But from the sound of it, it was as good a race as he's had this year - running to a 6th place finish. The course is long, don't ask me how, when it's a road course, but about a mile and a half extra.

Crossroads at 95 5k: Last year Brennan went to this lowkey race, ran okay and snatched up some loot. Apparently the memo got out this year, because the times were ABSURD. Pat McLoughlin did all he could on what I presume to be a sloppy and also dumb course, and took 11th in 17:52. Dustin Meeker, whom some of you met in September at track, was 5th in 16:22.

Run Through the Grapevine 8k: This is the hardest race I'd ever done, and that was in good weather. Can't imagine how tough it must have been in the weather of Sunday morning! Tom Stott sweats this race's nuts, and despite the conditions ran a course best at 33:07 and took 16th place!

Dino Dash 5k: Cheese has barely been hitting 40mpw and hasn't done any workouts so he went into it unsure of himself. But, if he wanted a shot at winning anything, he knew he'd have to chase the lead pack. BALLER. "Unfortunately for me, 10 guys dropped me before a half-mile came, gapping me by quite a bit. I still came through at 5:03 and quickly realized how big of a mistake I had made." Out of great fear for getting girled, he managed to hold off the femmes and finished 12th in 16:52. Winner was 14:24 and a 13 year old kid ran 16:03. Ouch.

ACC Championships: Down in NC, Greg Jubb was 71st in 25:38, about what he ran on the same course earlier this month. He helped the TERPS to a 7th place finish in the conference meet, where we used to finish 9th (out of 9, now at least there are 12 teams). So awesome job Greg, and thanks for making us not look terrible.

I was hoping to have NCOTB's race results, but I haven't heard from him and I don't know what the race was called. And I've looked up races in Kentucky but there are no results for any of them. Damn Kentucky.