Famous Ankles

Just about a year ago, I did one of my first posts that became mildly popular. It was for the 2007 NYC Half-Marathon and I think it may have been the first item that someone used Google to find my posting. At the time, I had very few readers (and still do, but a few more than then) and was pleased that someone was starting to find my stuff.

So, when I heard that the Half-Marathon was on again, I knew I had to go. Who knows, maybe one of those early Googlers was still a reader.

But, I nearly blew it. I had planned to get there maybe 8:30 or so. Early Sunday morning, I was flipping channels and found out that the race actually began right about 7am and the runners were already headed toward Times Square (where I planned to watch). Yow.

So, I made my way very quickly over to Times Square and got there just after the front runners had passed. But I was there for the women front-runners. They passed by me about 1 minute after I got to my spot. (I got there at about 7:48am.)

For this coverage, there’s a lot of stuff but the item that I found of most interest wasn’t really the runners themselves, but the ebb and flow of the race. So, to show how it happened, I’ll be putting in the relative time that had elapsed since I arrived. You can note the size of the crowds and the runners.

This is five minutes after I arrived.

And now, 8 minutes after I showed up.

This next runner was all pumped up and trying to pump up the crowd, 11 minutes after I started watching. The running group was still pretty sparse at that point.

Twelve minutes in (about 8am), I got a picture of a two-fer. Most of the runners were wearing headphones (okay, a large number of them) and were looking for friends/family. How they spotted people is a bit of a mystery. I presume that lots of times the earpieces were for phones and they were talking with their friends and hearing where to look.

Of all the people I took pictures of; this guy I got twice. His exuberance was terrific and he was making pretty good time despite his antics. 13 minutes in.

Of course, if you’re an airplane it’s easy to make good time. Still 13 minutes in.

The 13-minutes-in group was starting to become more numerous and flagrant about asking for the crowd to cheer.

By 15 minutes in, the runners had reached the point of being a general crowd of them.

And at 17 minutes in they were still trying to get us to cheer. Successfully, too.

By 21 minutes in, the calls for cheers seemed to have died down a bit; but the crowd was even bigger.

And by 22 minutes in, some of the runners were more obviously doing run-walk combinations.

Here, 26 minutes into my attendance; another earphone wearer had spotted friends. Actually, some people to the left of me greeted two or three of the runners by name. They may not have been the same people to my left, but I think they were.

And by 28 minutes in (that’s about 8:17am), some were still trying to get the crowd cheering. Hey, it worked for me and I did cheer a lot for a very long time during the event.

And at 28 minutes in, here’s another guy who spotted/was spotted by the people to my left.

More in my next post.

-H

This entry was posted on July 27, 2008 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Events, Manhattan, Mid-town, Times Square. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.