A Storm, a Race and Dinner with Friends

Mark texted to say he was running the mile with a rabbit on Friday evening at the Armory track in Manhattan. A runner is the "rabbit" and his or her job is to pace the race so that a better time might result. Mark would be trying to go sub-4:00 in the mile.

A big storm was brewing in the NYC area, a "monster," "the storm of the century" according to the media which was so delighted to be able to report on something people actually wanted to listen to. No milk, no bread, no water, no gas. Yikes!

We were so scared, we jumped in the car with our dog and a day's worth of clothing and meds, water and snacks. We planned to stay with friends in Westchester if need be. The snow began to fall within the first hour of our trip. It got a little worse, but there was only light traffic due to the fleeing of all non-essential humans. A car did spin out in front of us on the Palisades Parkway and hit the guardrail, but we were able to avoid him, and he was able to back up an pull out safely

Mark's race went off with a glitch. Two runners collided and fell down during the first 100 meters so they had to stop the race and start over. Then the officials decided to run the women's 5k race before the restart, which instead of helping the milers, potentially made them lose focus.

The first 400 meters were blazing fast. The rabbit was setting a pace that would easily result in a sub-4 mile. Mark ran his fastest 400m ever, 50.9 seconds. I started to feel woozy but I know one member of the Columbia cheering squad would catch me, or at least pick me up after the race.

They were still on pace at the 800, but it was clear the race had gone out too fast. Mark fell back. The race was won in 4:06 by another Columbia runner. Mark came in 4th. As usual, Mark was philosophical about the race. My husband felt worse than he did. Sub-4 would have been a nice birthday gift for Mark, but he can wait. His birthday is today. We're going to NYC to take him to a steakhouse, a tradition we started a couple of years ago. No snow is predicted.

When we left the Armory there was about 2-3" of wet snow on the ground. It's hard to gauge snow depth in Manhattan though, so we still believed it was too treacherous to drive home. I called Connie and told her we were coming for the night. We had a delicious pasta with pesto sauce and salad, washed down with red wine. Afterwards, we enjoyed Steve's selection of old-time videos which were a hoot and a half. When I'd had enough Petula Clark, I went to bed.

In the morning we discovered that the storm wasn't too serious in NYC. Long Island was hit badly, as was CT, RI and MA. Westchester got about 8", and we arrived in Jville to find maybe 5" of snow.

I was in the Blizzard of '77 in Buffalo, NY. I went to work at 10 am with no media splash about snow. Within 4 hours, the city was buried in a freak blizzard, stranding people at work or in cars. Buses stopped running. The city shut down and had to have food and snow-removal equipment helicoptered in. The National Guard came to help those trapped (who survived), and to ferry sick people to hospitals. I was lucky. I was trapped in the house of a well-off family who was planning a bar mitzvah for their son the next day. There was no bar mitzvah, but there was lots of yummy food, and I had a bedroom to myself. I stayed for a week and watched "Roots" with the family.

Growing up on Long Island, I saw my share of blizzards and hurricanes that made us lose power and wreaked havoc around the area. Of course the weather reports predicting the storm were on TV, and people probably raided the supermarkets for supplies, but media didn't knock us over the head with dire doom and gloom warnings. There were fewer people then, but they seemed more self-reliant..

Happy Birthday to you, Mark.