After some intensive traveling over the last two months, I totally overscheduled myself for sporting events while home in New York City this weekend. Not only was Saturday the Glen Goldstein “Ride to Montauk” but there was also a New York Marathon qualifier 5 mile race on Sunday in Central Park. So, I booked in for both events thinking that being indestructible, I would somehow survive. Now, on the day after this long weekend, I have survived and am writing about it.
Over the last few years I have done various distances on the organized rides to Montauk, at the tip of Long Island. One year I broke up the ride into two days, doing about 70 miles each day and spending the night half way out on the Island. Three or four years ago, I actually got on my bike early in the morning and rode the entire 145 miles in one day. That was crazy and I was awfully tired of sitting on a bike seat by the end of that day. Last year, Clarence and I rode the 100 miles in the pouring rain. But this year, with the Father’s Day Five Mile race the following day, I decided to be sensible and ride the 66 mile route from Mastic out to Montauk.
Glen Goldstein, who runs these rides, has built adaptive learning into the way that he organizes these rides. Each year when things go wrong, Glen responds by changing something to avoid the bad and make the experience better. Last year he experimented with Friday check-in to avoid the problems with long lines. This year he not only had Friday check-in but also Sunday bike pickup, so that no one had to wait for the trucks coming up the Long Island Freeway to finally make it to Manhattan where the cyclists, who had taken the train had arrived hours before. So, since I had gotten the Express checkin and had my wrist, luggage and bike bands already, on Friday afternoon I just rode my bike over to Bicycle Habitat, handed my bike to someone on a truck and took the subway home. The next morning, I could sleep in a bit longer, took a cab to Penn Station and boarded the 7:10 train and was riding by 9:36 am.
I hammered for 3:44 minutes, riding hard in an individual time trial for almost 69 miles. It was a fast and furious day and I felt great on the bike. It was just about 2:00 pm when I got to the finish, found my gear bag, jumped in a hot shower and pounded back a few beers. It is incredibly important to get calories into your body within the first forty-five minutes after a long ride and beer provides those calories with benefits. OK.. I had a hamburger, some pasta and well, a few more beers. By 3:20 I was on the train headed to Manhattan and by about 3:40 was sound asleep.
Sunday’s race was a five miler at 8:30 am, but it was already in the upper seventies (about 22 degrees) when the race began.
This is the bike that I ride around Manhattan; a fixie with the rear hub set to freewheel. It is chained to the fencing around the baggage storage area at the race start/finish line.
Father’s Day Race Against Prostate Cancer
List by Name: Langston Goree
Distance: 5.0 Miles, 8.0 Kilometers
Date/Time: June 20, 2010, 8:30 am
Location: Central Park, NYC
| Last Name | First Name | Sex/ Age | Bib | Team | City | State | Overall Place | Gender Place | Age Place | Finish Time | Pace/ Mile | AG Time | AG Gender Place | AG % |
| GOREE | LANGSTON | M57 | 3213 | NEW YORK | NY | 2623 | 2118 | 99 | 45:38 | 9:07 | 37:39 | 1293 | 56.6 % |
This was a nice slow training run. My legs were weary and it was really hot. I ran just as fast as I wanted to and tried to keep my HR to about 140-150, except on the uphills and in the last half a mile or so. It was a day when I vowed to start slow and taper off. Well, it wasn’t really a taper but I never red-lined and ran a sensible race considering the long bike ride the day before.
More than a little red, and not feeling all that great, at the finish line. Smartly headed for the shade.
Sunday, the last day of Spring, was also my last day before starting my (now) annual Summer Solstice through Autumnal Equinox cleanse. So, on Sunday afternoon I celebrated a long weekend of sport with a bottle of Whitecliff Winery’s Awosting (“Light, clean, fruity and refreshing with plenty of peach in the aroma. Awosting is a blend of Seyval Blanc and Vignoles grapes. This is the taste of the Hudson Valley!...and it won a Gold medal and best in class from the Hudson Valley Wine Competition…. according to the Whitecliff Wines website.) Now it is three months “on the wagon,” focusing on getting my weight down for the final push to the NY Marathon in November.
I’m not keen on keeping my body fat for more than a short time under 15%, since I think that it causes a rise in cortisol when the body thinks that it is dangerously low on stored fat. The stress on the body from high levels of cortisol is just not healthy. So, it’s best to drop weight down to under 10-12% only when it is necessary for a big sporting event, every few years. Well, this is that time and I’ll be dropping about twenty pounds over the next four months so that I’m at my lightest in the last twenty years for the 26.2 miles on 7 November 2010.
