Let's hear it for the girls: A Manhattan Half-Marathon Race Recap
(Some skirty ladies, from Skirt Sports.com)
Back in the 1990's (my salad days), I used to be a semi-serious runner. I trained for four marathons, and finished three of them in respectable times, once qualifying for Boston with several minutes to spare. I wasn't an elite athlete by any standard, but I was decent. I was also dedicated, averaging two road races a month in the summer. These mass running convocations tended to be dominated by men --- teeming, steaming masses of broad, hairy men with sneakers the length of my tibia. Even with my cropped hair and boyish figure, I always felt conspicuous at the starting line. The female runners stood out like poodle skirts at a drag race, especially in the faster groups like mine. This made it easy to find female training buddies: once you found a woman who could keep your pace, you kept her contact info. It also made it easy to meet men. All I had to do was open my mouth and say something during the race ("Whoa, it's hot out today" worked fine). Chances were likely that the person who heard me--and responded to me--would be a guy.
As I approached 30 and entered the pizza-and-prosciutto phase of my life, my competitive spirit fizzled as individual body parts snapped, crackled and popped. I took a long hiatus from long-distance running, forsaking road races in order to tend to other hobbies, like watching television and reading comic books.
A few months ago, my boyfriend (who was also a fanatic runner in his twenties –- in fact, that's how we met) and I started feeling old and puffy, so we decided to see what we had left. We signed up for the Manhattan Half-Marathon, and committed to a fairly regimented 9-week training program.
Today we ran our first competitive race in six years. A lot has changed!
When we were dues-paying members of the New York Road Runners Club, iPods hadn't been invented yet, and the standard running uniform consisted of a tank top and split short-shorts. We expected to see more of the former and hoped for less of the latter (thankfully, the near-indecent split-shorts have fallen out of style, at least for men). In the holding corrals of this morning's half-marathon, I also spotted five women wearing flirty little skirts in various shades of pink. Compared to my basic black shorts, these pink skirts looked like deconstructed tutus. I don't remember Nike or Saucony or Adidas offering pink singlets in 1990 (if they had, I still wouldn't have bought them), never mind tutus. Yet women today are flaunting their femininity on the course.
I was also surprised by the number of women I saw in the race. Official stats showed that the gender split was nearly 50-50, and women easily outnumbered men in the 20-29 age group (1787 vs. 1015), the second-largest age category in the race. As we were waiting in line for the bathroom, we kept spotting gaggles of gals greeting each other with kisses and squeals. Along the course, we noticed that many of these women ran in pairs or triads. For many young professional women, it looks like the 6am run is replacing the 6pm happy hour as a way to get together and catch up.
During my time off from racing, I read numerous articles gloating about the increasing number of female runners. However, these seemed written from perspective of someone (like the publishers of Runner's World or the organizers of the New York Road Runner's Club) who had a lot to gain from the discovery of a new market for sneakers, running apparel and race participation (for those non-runners out there, races aren't free, or free of brand sponsorship. I paid a whopping $70 to run in Nike's Manhattan Half-Marathon). I didn’t hear much about the accomplishments of these new hordes of female racers, or whether they were advancing the sport. No one seemed to care about how well these women were performing, just that they were getting out there on a regular basis. I developed the impression that while more women were running, the regular girls--not the elites--weren't necessarily running fast. The female race participants may have been using up all the toilet paper in the Port-o-Johns, but it didn't sound to me like they were giving the John Does in the middle of the pack a run for their money.
This was important to me, because when I used to run, I didn't just run to finish, I ran to beat my PR -- and to beat other runners. I took pride in my sport, and in my ability to keep up with the men (ie, the "serious" runners). I loathed the idea of distance running becoming simply an alternative to Pilates or a great way to lose that maternity weight.
From what I could tell, most of the women in today's half-marathon were taking the race very seriously. I definitely wasn't the only lady sprinting up hills in the park, or streaming past panting dudes on the West Side Highway. I felt surrounded by hard-working, hard-running women at all points on the course. It's true that I've slowed down a bit as I've aged, but even that is a testament to women's speed and athleticism. With a time of 1:54:37, I was still the 1,051st woman to cross the line out of 4758 -- I would bet that put me farther back today's pack than it would have in the pack of a half-decade ago.
Today was a lot of fun, and it was inspiring. Maybe this new crop of female runners has learned how to be feminine and fast, friendly and fierce on the course. Instead of spurring me to stay with the guys, these runners made me want to kick some skirted female butt. And that's a good thing.
One of the funniest and (oddly) most empowering moments was when two preppy female racers in headbands, both running faster than me and one wearing a black skirt, made a dash for Central Park woods. Men have traditionally been the only ones able to sneak a pee in a potty-less stretch of the race course. It's nice to see women--speedy women--earning that right.
ps: The race course went straight through Times Square, across 42nd Street, and down the West Side Highway. It was such a treat to be able to sprint past the Carnegie Deli and the city's largest theaters without having to worry about traffic or tourists. Some really cool photos of the Times Square stretch can be found here and here and here.
Comments
Contratulations, Corrie!
Posted by: Amie | August 7, 2007 9:30 AM