Bagpipes, drums, and men in kilts, oh my

It's Tartan week here in New York and on Sunday, April 1 was the Scotland Run 10k or 6.2 miles for those of us not up on these newfangled metric conversions. The big question; would I end up feeling like Braveheart (at least the Mel Gibson, face painted inspiring speech one, not the executed, hanged, drawn and quartered version) or a steaming pile of haggis.

Let's look at a little background. Well, so far in training I have been doing around 50 minute runs and/or around 5 miles, so this would be further that I have been regularly going. Plus we'll add to that the fact that I didn't exactly get a ton of sleep the night before. That's a story for another blog, but lets just say that it involved an exploration of various lower east side establishments and the wonders of chocolate and alcohol combinations. So that works out to about 3 hours of sleep.

As expected, lots of bagpipes, drums and men in kilts. The picture above is the bagpipe procession that led the runners down from the gathering point down to the start line of the race. More pictures below:

Before the race milling around the field, not quite sure what the big stuffed horned animal guy wearing a kilt is or what it has to do with Scotland. Anyone?

Waiting around with the rest of the runners at the back of the pack for the race to start.

Let's follow the bagpipes to the Start line.

Afterwards, finished, now someone point me to the bagels!

Still rockin out to the bagpipes afterwards.

And in case you were wondering how I did, I was very pleased with my personal results. The run felt good to me and although I felt a little tired at somewhere between the uphill portion of the 4 - 5 mile mark, I kept going.

As I was running, I thought back to the Connection to the Cause breakfast that we had after our morning group training run on Saturday. Some of the staff from the Leukemia & Lymphoma society spoke to us about the good things they are able to do as a result of our efforts. One women spoke about her own experiences fighting cancer and how the efforts of people in Team in Training lifted her along when she was unable to physically do any type of activity. Listening to the stories of teammates who have completed marathons, triathlons, and bike rides, the common thread seems to be that they are inspired to keep going when they are tired from their personal connections, friends, family members, etc with cancer. Any physical tiredness we are feeling after running, biking, swimming, being tortured by the coaches, etc is nothing compared to the daily struggles of the patients to sometimes just get out of bed in the morning and complete another round of chemotherapy. I guess the point is that we end up inspiring each other to go further than we want or though we could.

I completed the 6.2 miles in about 58:54 while running the last three miles at a 9 minute mile pace. Afterwards I still felt strong with no desire to collapse on the ground and walked back to uptown to my apartment. What have we learned from this? It appears that the secret to my athletic success is alcohol and lack of sleep. Funny, but they never mentioned that in our group training sessions. I may have to follow up with the coaches on that one. And maybe a little inspiration too. You never know.

PS: And no Haggis to be seen anywhere.