Three Bridges Plus 400 Runners = Fun!

Lara K

Boy time flies when you’re having fun…yeah, if you can call marathon training fun ;-) Seemed like just yesterday we were sweating through LTR #1 during Heatpocalypse 2011. Now we’re all (or at least most of us) on the verge of tapering for our various fall marathons and getting in our last 20-miler.

Enter the world famous…OK maybe NYC running community famous…3 Bridges Long Training Run!! This was the brainchild of Mr. President, Glen W, back in 2007, back when the Marathon Training Program (MTP) was just a baby. Now both have seriously grown!!

How much? The attendance at this run was more than 400 eager runners (well as eager as you can get at 7 in the morning.) What can you say-the run is a victim of its own popularity :-) Not only is this run popular amongst the Flyers, but amongst FOF’s (Friends of Flyers) and even the buzz on this amongst the NYC running community is that this is *the* 20-miler to do. Plus, we had Team For Kids and the Alzheimer’s Association charity groups joining up with us this time around. So the headcount was gonna be double what we had for our first 3 Bridges Run two weeks prior, but we could pull it off with our top-notch organizational skills…

Well first off, even though we had three waves for the previous run, with double the participants, we needed to have double the waves. We needed to send out groups of runners in waves partially to ease congestion throughout the run route, but also because our meeting place - the JackRabbit store on the UWS that generously served as our host for the run - could only handle so many people so we had to stagger the volume. What that meant for me was a super-early wake-up call as I was pacing the 9 minute group and we had a 6:45 AM (yes, AM, you read that right) departure!

But thankfully everyone seemed to make it on time (as a west sider, I was very grateful that this run departed from the west side store this time around! Less chance of MTA fails getting uptown!). So Mr. President gave us some final instructions, and I waited what seemed like forever for my Garmin to get a signal (I think it sensed it was getting replaced after this run) and after a few minutes, we were off.

Pres Glen W Provides Pre-Run Instructions
As Runners Prepare to Head Off before the Sun is Up!

In the first 3 Bridges Run, I had a great group of “niners” to lead and this time was no exception. Even though I was the main “leader” this time around, there were a few others who would also help to keep things in check, make sure everyone was staying together and in the rec lane, etc.  It definitely helped with a big group for everyone to work together. 

Lara K in Pink Compression Socks
Holds Her Pace Group Together and on Pace

The pacing went well as usual -- only miles that were slower were one in the early going where we had a major headwind on the West Side Highway and the uphill bridge miles, and not by much. In fact, at the water station at the 10.5 mile point in Brooklyn, Paul N. who was manning the station with his wife Cassie N. said that my group was within a minute or 2 of the expected arrival time. Whoa. How good is that?

So to Queens we went and doing well, despite Mark R’s constant insistence that we were “Almost there!” :-) Heather M, Deb M, and Louie R were quite the sight for sore eyes at the last water stop before the Queensboro Bridge, and their cheering was such a nice pick-me-up.

Aid Station Ready for Runners

Took on the bridge - was it me or did it get longer since two weeks prior? Once we got to the park it was a madhouse with some huge walk going on that was taking up the entire 72nd Street Transverse and the East Drive, too, as we made our way up Cat Hill. As our course included running on the Great Lawn Oval, we had to wait for it to clear out before we could cross…kinda like an NYRR race! Finally it did and we headed across the park, down the west drive and back to JackRabbit…and the most obsessive of us, including yours truly, did a little bit of extra running around the block til our Garmins said 20.00 miles. :-)

Afterwards, we were treated to coffee, Accelerade, bagels and lotsa free cereal (including swag in the form of free boxes of cereal to take home!) courtesy of JackRabbit, while some of us headed upstairs to take advantage of the 15% discount we received from JackRabbit after the run. You could definitely feel the satisfaction and excitement in the air - once again, this run was a huge success.

Thanks to all who made this run possible. This is by far my favorite Flyer long run and volunteering as a pace group leader is just so rewarding in many ways. I definitely encourage volunteering for this run next year!

And to borrow the slogan from the 2008 NYC Marathon -“What Does It Take?” - here’s what it took to pull this run off so perfectly…

1,042 half-liter bottles of water
810 16.9 oz bottles of Gatorade
576 eight-oz bottles of water
17 Pacers
10 Water Station Volunteers
300 Boxes of Bare Naked Cereal
3 Check-In Volunteers
1 Director of Field Operation [DoFo] -Ed A.
And, last, but certainly not least - the founder of this great run, Glen W!

-Lara K