A Trip to Washington DC for the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (April 1st to 3rd, 2017)

by Papa Bear

The Lincoln Memorial across the Reflecting Pool

Back to 1990

My

first Cherry Blossom 10 Miler was in 1990 when there were a couple of thousand runners and a very informal organization. I don't remember if the starter said "go" or there was a horn, but it was typical of the good old days. This year there were over 17,000 participants and like a lot of races nowadays it was highly sponsored, well marketed and well organized. There were a number of corrals (something unheard of in 1990), and I think the announcer said that my corral had it's own sponsor — "The Orange Corral, sponsored by so-and-so, will be starting in two minutes". But you know what? I loved the race in 1990, and I still love it today although my pace has slowed about 3 minutes a mile. Ouch!

For the last several years my friend and running partner Susan and I had registered as a "group" so in the lottery we would both get in or both lose out. You have to apply for the lottery in December, so you do it on "spec", hoping you'll be ready and able to run the race. I was a bit under-trained when April came around, but Susan had sustained a knee injury about 3 weeks before. But she soldiered on and figured she'd just do the best she could.

Besides, we don't go only for the race — there's lots of sights and scenes in Washington, including good (but affordable) restaurants, museums, historic sights and even the ballet at the Kennedy Center (yes we went: The Little Mermaid, sad but beautifully done). And we always try to do it on the cheap: bolt Bus ($35 round Trip) and staying in the HI Washington D.C. Hostel ($43 per night).

Saturday

We took the 7:30 Bolt Bus and got to Washington around noon. We then took the "DC Circulator" bus to the Hostel ($1), dropped off our stuff and tried (but failed) to get dinner reservations at Capitol City Brewing, a favorite of ours (we tried again on Sunday night and got in with no waiting — everyone had left town!). So we walked to pick up our race packets at the National Building Museum (a beautiful structure inside and out) which was the race head quarters.

From there we walked down to the Mall and checked out the United States Botanic Garden, new to me and quite lovely — but not a match for our own NY Botanical Garden in the Bronx.

We then trudged back up the hill to one our favorite restaurants: Busboys and Poets, a must for you if you should visit Washington. To quote from their website: "The name Busboys and Poets refers to American poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in the 1920s, prior to gaining recognition as a poet." It is more than an eating place, it is a performance space and venue for many progressive happenings and is devoted the ideal of an egalitarian and inclusive community.

So, we had a long bus ride from New York, did quite a bit of walking, picked up our race packets, visited the Botanic Garden and enjoyed an excellent meal at a unique restaurant — AND — we had a 10 Mile Race to run early the next morning. The best thing to do would be to get back to the Hostel and to retire early to bed, yes?

No! Susan had bought tickets to a ballet (The Little Mermaid) at the Kennedy Center, way out on the west side of town and it started at 8:00 that night and we didn't know how to get there. So we got back to the Hostel, changed into our going-to-the-Kennedy-Center clothes and waited for a bus. It didn't come for 10 - 15 minutes, so we gave up and took a cab. Hey it's like a vacation, it's OK to take a cab!

The Kennedy Center

We greatly enjoyed the whole experience, even though it's a dark tale. It was brilliantly danced by the troupe and although I thought I would fall asleep and was tempted to go home (and to bed) at the intermission, we stayed till the end and enjoyed the beautiful ending. We "ran today's race" from New York to the Kennedy Center and finished very satisfied (and took another cab home). Would we could do it again Sunday in the 10 miler!

Sunday Morning

 

The Start of the Orange Corral

Cherry Blossom 10 Miler
Mile	Split
1	10:41
2	10:21
3	10:21
4	10:21
5	10:25
6	10:22
7	10:17
8	10:20
9	10:08
10	9:59
Finish	1:43:15
Pace	10:20

I met Susan about 6:45 in the kitchen/dining room. Breakfast was not officially served till 7:00 but we could at least get some coffee which is available at all hours. John, the manager of the kitchen, was setting up. We had chatted with him on Saturday and he knew us from previous years and had actually fetched some food for us (an apple and a muffin).

The elites didn't start till 7:30, so we back-of-the packers had plenty of time. My corral didn't start till about 7:45 and Susan planned to get at the very back of the pack, so her cut off to get down to the race start was 8:00 or something like that. I said good bye and started out about 7:20 and made it down in plenty of time to squeeze into the Orange corral. This group was expected to run somewhere in the 10 to 11 minutes per mile range so I was in the right place. (I looked up my 1990 race results and I had run that race at a 7:25 pace. Wow! What a difference 27 years can make!) I knew I was under-trained but I wanted to do as well as I could anyway. I recalled the Cherry Tree race in Prospect Park in mid February where I really died in the last 3 miles, and hoped that that would not happen here. Besides this was a flat course as opposed to Prospect Park which is very far from flat.
I got a good start (the wave starts work well) and ran cautiously the first mile and then picked it up a bit. It turns out my first mile was my slowest, no doubt due to the crowds, but my last mile was the fastest. Check the splits in the table on the right.

Two things surprised me in a very positive way: I never felt like I was running out of steam as the miles went by, and my right forefoot never felt numb. This latter was very welcome since I have lived with this problem for over 5 years and had learned just to put up with it.

The course was lovely, but the few cherry blossoms we encountered looked past their prime. The weather also cooperated with temperatures in the 40°s at the start and in the 50°s at the finish. And there were no howling winds like last year. And although we tried to forget politics for the weekend in this "seat of the government", we all got a chuckle from one hand lettered sign: "You run better than the government".

I had some strength left the last mile or two, and pushed as much as I could and they were the fastest two miles for the race. The finish line photo on the right certainly shows this.

Cherry Blossom 10 Miler
	Split	Pace
1st Third	34:51	10:27
2nd Third	34:33	10:22
3rd Third	33:53	10:10
Finish	1:43:15	10:20

Cherry Tree 10 Miler
	Split	Pace
1st Third	32:59	9:53
2nd Third	34:15	10:20
3rd Third	36:13	10:53
Finish	1:43:28	10:21

Well, how did I do compared to the Prospect Park race? The two tables (on the left, this race, on the right, that race) tell the story very well. Although the finishing times were close, the splits show a dramatically different story: in the Prospect Park race I had strongly positive splits (getting slower: 9:53, 10:20, 10:53) and this race I had negative splits (getting faster: 10:27, 10:22, 10:20). I was very happy with that and it encouraged me to train a bit more, especially by doing longer weekly runs to get some increased endurance and further improve my times.

Papa Bear at the Finish

I climbed the hill back to the Hostel and after cleaning up and recovering a bit, I met up with Susan and we had a bite to eat and planned for our afternoon: we would visit the new African American Museum.

Sunday Afternoon

The new African American Museum in Washington opened in late September 2016. The attendance was so overwhelming that they had to introduce "timed entry passes" which you could get on-line for future dates. At the time when we registered for the Cherry Blossom and received our lottery acceptances (December 12th), they were "sold out" for every day till March and their web site said they would not be opening it up for April, May and June till "to be announced".

Susan and I agreed we should really try for these passes and decided the afternoon of race day would be the best. So we checked the web site every day and finally in late December they announced the passes would be available on-line starting on January 4th. So we both logged in at 9:00 on January 4th and agreed who ever got through first would text the other. We figured since this was the first weekend of the new batch of timed entries and the weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival to boot, that the demand would be high. Well, I won our own little lottery and I got two passes for us for 2:45 on April 2nd, race day.

Now, back to race day, we were a little "itchy" when afternoon came around so we went down to check out the National Gallery (just a bit east of the African American Museum) first. There were interesting archival photos and period furniture but we managed to lose each other and cell reception was poor. Well, all's well that ends well, and we did find each other and walked along the mall in the warm sunny April afternoon and got to our destination about 15 minutes early. A line was already forming up for the next "wave start", so I asked a security guard if we should get in the line (thinking it might be the 2:30 wave) but she just let us skip the line and go right in. And there we were.

The African American Museum

The building which is shown above, although it appears to be rather large, is actually much larger. When we went in and looked at the guide pamphlet, we saw that there were three floors below ground level showing the history of the Black experience in North America from the beginning of the slave trade in the 16th century up to the present. And the three floors above showed African American art and artifice. So we figured we'd take the elevator down and check out the history first, and then explore the upper floors.

Well, it didn't work out that way. First off there were large crowds everywhere and we took our time and looked carefully at everything. We knew we may not make it back here for some time. As for the narrative shown in the history floors, which included historical articles, quotations from early leaders, both African and American, they showed every detail of that terrible period.

The narrative took us step by painful step from the start of the slave trade in the mid 16th century, where European traders found there was more profit in shipping a human cargo of slaves to North and South America than engaging in the trading of goods, though the colonization of the New World and the establishment of the U.S. — which at the time was highly dependent on slave labor in both the southern and northern states — through numerous slave uprising, which were brutally suppressed, through the abolitionists movement in the 18th and 19th centuries which fostered the "Underground Railroad", through the Civil War, the "Jim Crow" period, the "Great Migration", the Civil Rights Act and and up though the present day.

I'm sorry but I can't verbalize all I saw — it was just too powerful and moving. We were shaken. When we got back to the ground floor it was almost 5:00 and we had to leave. We vowed we would come back to visit what we had missed. If you go, try to pick a time when there would be less crowds and allow plenty of time. You may need two visits since you'll need time to digest what you've seen, which I'm sill doing.

Monday

We had tickets for the 12:00 noon Bolt bus back to New York City. So over breakfast, we figured we needed to leave the Hostel by 11:00 or at the latest 11:15 to make the bus. That would give us a couple of hours to check out the west end of the mall, in particular the Vietnam War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial and some adjacent areas. Monday was by far the nicest day, weather-wise, so we both went up, packed our stuff up and met in the lobby for a nice Sunday morning walk.

Beautiful Row Houses at Lafayette Square

We walked down and along the beautiful row houses along the west side of Lafayette Square (which were saved from development by none other that First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962 among others — see this), past the White House and down 17th Street to the Mall just west of the Washington Monument. It was totally cleaned up and you would never know there were 17,000+ runners here just one day before.

We had both seen this area numerous time but it's always an inspiration to visit. The Lincoln Memorial seen over the reflecting pool is just a marvel. I love that picture above with the clouds streaking up at an angle from the Memorial with the building and clouds reflected in the pool. We split up on the way back but this relatively long walk for a small number of objectives was well worth it.

We both managed to get everything down from our rooms, checked out and took a few minutes to relax. Then we left the Hostel and got the "Circulator" bus on time at 11:20. Unfortunately it didn't stay on time and we were held up by a construction project about half way to the station. So we got out of the bus with our luggage and walked the rest of the way to Union Station and got there with about 10 minutes to spare. And since we both had "Group A" tickets, we were first on the bus. About 4 and a half hours later we were in New York, and I was home about 45 minutes after that. It was a wonderful weekend!

This post is adapted from Papa Bear's blog  
Beyond Central Park