Fifth Avenue Mile

Yesterday after church our family scooted across the park to watch our seventh straight Fifth Avenue Mile.  It's one of our favorite races.  People from 8 to 98 run down this famous street, from the Metropolitan Museum to the Plaza Hotel, according to age group and gender.  Times range from men's pro winner Nick Willis's 3:50.5 to almost-centenarian Abe Weintraub's 22:10.  There are local elites, Achilles runners, those fast kids from Team Rabbits USA, and plenty of ordinary recreational runners.  The weather is typically gorgeous.

C.Z. was the first member of our own family to run in this race.  I think she was "officially" eight, although in reality, she wasn't quite seven.  (They just group you with the eight-year-olds until you're old enough.)  She ran it from 2001 until 2006 and then retired.  Bob has officially run it twice, not counting the first couple of years that he ran down the sidewalk after C.Z. so that she wouldn't have to be alone at the finish line.  Various visiting friends and family have run the race, too, including one of my nieces and Susan L.'s daughter Melissa.  And we almost always know some local friends in the race, from neighbor kids to Bob's training partners to his co-worker Judith Tripp, who won her age group yesterday.

One of my favorite heats in this race is the 70+ group.  Plenty of these men and women could still beat me any day.  Who knows what I'll be doing at 70, but I hope I can at least still manage a fast walk, if not a bit of a run!  So, they're inspiring to me--the kid who, at five, asked my parents if grownups could run, because I'd never seen any do so. 

But of course, for sheer elegance, it's pretty hard to beat the pro race.  I love watching the elites glide uptown for the start in their warm ups, then glide back down faster than any human should be able to run.  Yesterday, shortly after most of the men had already headed up for their start, I was chatting with friends and out of the corner of my eye, caught sight a lone runner jogging leisurely up the avenue.  He was about to pass by about a foot in front of me when I suddenly realized that he wore the perpetually pleased expression of Bernard Lagat.  Nick Willis edged him out by one tenth of a second in the end, but he's still a favorite of ours from all those Wanamaker Miles.  Bob saw him posing for photos at the end of the race and leaned into the crowd to shake his hand.  This is about as close as our family gets to celebrity worship. 

(And Susan, Nick Symmonds was there, too!) 

The New York Road Runners Club, who organizes this race, has a nice overall write up, and some great photos.  Meanwhile, I'll post my own personal favorite Fifth Avenue Mile photo, from 2006, when Bob caught an unexpected glance of Flat Stanley while on his way to a respectable 5:14 in the men's 40-45 heat.