2016 In-Unity-We-Run NYC Remembrance Sopfest RR - Rain/Rain/Rain

^{In-Unity-We-Run NYC Remembrance Marathon}

^{We said we would never forget, and a decade later we still remember 9/11.
This year will mark the 15th anniversary of 9/11 - let us honor the lives lost}

^{by supporting a local foundation.}

^{DONATION: $20.00 - all proceeds will go to Northwest Harvest Food Bank.}

^{Thanks Volunteers!}

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Last year’s IUWR NYC RM was wet too, as were my last two runs in last month’s Portland Marathon and my favorite Carkeek 12-hour Fun Run but only a handful of my 200 marathons over the last forty years have compared to the one-and-a-half inches of rain during this year’s IUWR.  Even newscasters were advising to wear “SCUBA-gear” to anyone brave enough to venture outside in the deluge.
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However, with all the golden-rusty autumn.leaves carpeting much of the bike paths, the IUWR Marathon is not to miss as one of most barefoot friendly marathons of the year.  Unfortunately, the heavy rains had washed pretty much most of the leaves this time into the adjacent Green River Slough to silently undulate along side us like half-block long river snakes.
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It wasn’t for everyone though.
Of the sixty starters in each, twelve marathoners and 19 halfers DNS’ed or DNF’ed (20% / 32%) while seven runners, including some MM’ers who should be used to anything, bailed out for a half only distance at the end of the first loop of the double out-and-back.
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However, not me.. In.particular, after an ignominous DNF of my own after getting lost late in the evening rain, cold, and sleet at the January 2006 Bridle Trails Running Festival when I joined 31 of 49 starters to DNF (61%),. I vowed thereafter to be better prepared and never let the weather make me DNF again.
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In this regard, I’ve tried the goofy rainbow umbrella hats before but they’re too lightweight to stay put in even the slightest wind so this time I combined lining the inside one of the sugegasa straw rice paddy hats from my friends in the All-Japan 100-Marathon Joyful Running Club with one of the 99¢ plastic ponchos Holly used at the Portland reunion fashioned as kind of a cape to avoid the discomfort of constant rain running down my neck.  It worked and, unlike past rainy runs in the great PNW, I never got cold, even on the final two hour 6.55-mile leg back to the start.
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In fact, the one-and-a-half hours for each of the first three sections of the double out-and-back had given some hope of breaking the elusive six hours that’d come so close in Portland (6:00:34) but I guess the weather got the best of me for another, now-accustomed DGL (“dead-glorious-last&rdquo.  .  .
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It helped, though, that most of the day was with MM Marvelous Monte’s 499th marathon

in only ten years, “Road Kill” Rick’s 485th in 39 years, and Leslie’s 300 in her ten years or so. 
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Although we’d all run the IUWR a half-dozen or more times and should know it by heart, when nobody else showed up for the remedial start at 6am, I didn’t want to risk taking a wrong turn in the early morning darkness so waited until the 6:30 am super-early start when Rick and a first-time gal training for the Seattle Marathon showed up.  .

Though we assured her our combined dozen-plus runnings wouldn’t get us lost, we not only got lost two-and-a-half times in the early-morning darkness but, after standing firm and telling Rick that I was sure the trail was straight ahead instead of the way he started going, it turned out to be so lost as to be on the wrong side of the Green River. No wonder our bewildered partner was one of the seven marathoners to drop at 13.1 miles.
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Oh well, two weeks of taper before a Thanksgiving weekend Wishbone 27-mile (11/25) and Seattle (11/27).  I think I need it.

That was Epic rain.  You are some tough cookie....

Another interesting RR.  Hopefully you will get some drier weather for the Seattle marathon.

Wow that sounds like a grand adventure!! More than a little envious here.