blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

This is the 3rd time I did the Pittsburgh Marathon. I really enjoy this race; it is in a great city with lots of cheering people and many bridges to cross. The goal for this race was to finally beat my old PR from 2005 (1:23:26). Last fall I came really close with 1:23:30. But this time I would make a new record. I knew it. I wanted it!

Based on the good time in Hartford I qualified to start as a seeded runner. This meant I could start in the first coral together with the Pros. I thought that was pretty exciting until I noticed that the control to this coral unfortunately wasn’t that rigid. There were many people from other Corals even some people from Coral D (>9min/miles). I had a hard time to even get into the Coral after my warm up. Since, I qualified I took out the right to squeeze my way up to the front. 3 minutes before the start I was within the first 10 lines which I thought was good enough. I was ready to go and even the weather was good with 50-60 degrees with a little rain.

As so often I started a little fast but if I would slow down after about half a mile, I wouldn’t know my pace at the first mile marker. So I kept following the female lead group up to miles 1. I read 6:00 min which meant that I was running about 20sec too fast per mile. I tried to ease into my pace, but that is really hard if you are feeling strong and feel like you could draft of every runner who overtakes you. Unfortunately, I missed the second mile marker so I had to wait till mile 3 to see how my pace is. I passed with 18:27, which means that I was 30 seconds ahead of time but only 5 seconds to fast on the last two miles. This sounded reasonable and I tried to keep my pace. Luckily I found some other people who were running the same pace. For the next couple miles I tried to safe as much energy as possible to have a strong finish. This meant not to lead and draft off people, after all we had wind was up to 9miles/h. I passed mile 6 a little under 38min which was exactly as planned. This meant that I was slowing down. With this in mind I tried to increase the speed a little not that I would lose more time. The next 3 miles I was mostly focusing on running around all the walkers (which started an hour earlier). I passed mile 9 on schedule with 57min.
At mile 10 the half-marathon and marathon course splits, so suddenly there were a lot less people on the course. Luckily the guy I had been drafting of the last mile was still in front of me. Even though I knew that the 10 mile marker must have been around there I didn’t see it. I checked my watch and saw that I was something over 1:03:00. This meant that I had a little less than 20min left for the last 5k (3.1 miles). This is definitely doable it is all in my mind! I increase my pace and tried to overtake the guy in front of me, but I gave up on it once I felt the head wind. Since we were running almost at my desired pace, I decided once more to safe energy and draft a little longer. At mile 11 the time had finally come to take it into my hands. I passed him and increased the speed, over the bridge back into the city, there was a really strong head wind which made it harder to run. But I was thinking only one thing: “I am not going to miss the NYC qualifying time again!”.
I pushed myself even harder, I started passing several people and then I was at the 12 mile marker. I was wondering if I could keep up this pace since my body was complaining. But I buried this thought. If I want to qualify that is the way to go. 3 turns later I looked at the last bridge. It looked and felt very steep even though I am sure it was only 40 feet of elevation. All I was thinking don’t give in… I can do it! I can do it! I over took a couple more people and some of them even encourage me by saying “Keep it strong!”. Wow, how nice of them! The funniest was a guy whom I just caught up with on the top of the bridge and a spectator asked who of the two is going to win? And the guy next to me said: “He is!” He must have known how committed I was :-).
There the last turn. I checked my watch something over 1h 20min. I was shocked, the finish seemed so far away, and I had less than 3 minutes to get there. There was nothing left to do then increase my pace again and again. At least there were a couple of other competitive runners out there which gave me a run for my money…. I can do it, I can do it… I did it!
After all the hard training I though this qualification time should have been easy. I was surprised that I had such a hard struggle at the end.

Finisher Time: 1:22:42

Amy also ran the half marathon. Unfortunately she missed her PR by only 50 seconds. Considering her leg injury and the work and school load this spring. This is a great result! Congrats!

Many have heard the joke:

What do American Beer and having sex in a canoe have in common?
Both are fucking close to water!

But the sad fact is that exactly this kind of beer is what is sold to 95% in the USA. Only 5% is from smaller independent breweries. Shocking about that is that this 95% of beer comes from three companies: Anheuser-Bush (Budweiser), Miller, Coors.
Living in Pittsburgh for 1.5 years I always drunk Yuengling and wasn’t aware what kind of “war” is going on between all this smaller breweries against the big ones, since it was so easy accessible all over the city. But this is not the case in other parts of America. Here in Stamford I have the hardest time to buy decent beer in a store. Yes, I live next to a local brewery which eases this sad fact a little…

I highly recommend this documentary movie. Watch it and tell me what you think about it.
Yes, I know many readers are living outside of the USA and might ask themselves: “Why should that bother me?”. Well how do you know there is not a similar Beer War going on in your country…?

Watch a trailer of the movie!!

While I was in Pittsburgh I learned the meaning of the “Pittsburgh Chair”. In Pittsburgh chairs are used to reserve a parking space for a car. This was heavily used in the last couple days when Pittsburgh was buried in almost 2 foot of snow. People, who dug out their car, most often reserved their spot while they were off to work or other things. The interesting part about that is that this reservation system is mostly respected by everyone and people still have their spot if they return in the evening. This tradition has even its own Wikipedia entry even though it is named parking chair.

Here is a report from a local news paper.

I uploaded some pictures with examples.

What an awesome coincidence. Today, at my Birthday, they opened a Dunkin’ Donuts in my neighborhood. They must have known how much I love sweet stuff. The logical consequence was that I went there this morning and got a dozen donuts.

Sugar high! Jihaa

Today, is a good day to be a CMU student!
I was one of the lucky 1200 people who got a ticket for the Keynote from Bill Gates for the opening for the Gates Center for Computer Science and the Hillman Center for Future-Generation Technologies at Carnegie Mellon University.

Even though I didn’t do anything for this center, besides going to the opening ceremony, I still feel good about it.
Especially, walking through the new building made me feel happy. Maybe this is also because these two building are really cool.

People who are interested in the talk of Bill Gates should watch the following video: Bill Gates Keynote.
I was amused how Bill Gates answered some of the difficult questions.
Here is another video which was presented during the ceremony: School of Computer Science Milestones

This morning I witnessed a car chase: 1 old black car followed by 3 cops (one on a motorcycle). They were racing up Forbs Avenue where as the black old car drove like crazy… That is all the excitement you need at 7:30 in the morning.

Over the last weekend we moved into our new apartment. Since we didn’t have everything set up yet, we had to be creative to eat our first dinner at the new place

Btw: This is the last week of the summer semester, and then I will have two whole weeks of holidays. Jihaa!

Finally, it is getting warmer in Pittsburgh.

It is about time that I write something about the winter in Pittsburgh.
This is especially for all the Swiss friends who were complaining about the cold winter in Switzerland, and that I must have a very nice time over here!

For the most time the temperature during the Pittsburgh winter is below 0 degree Celsius. Sometimes it was below -10 degree Celsius for weeks.
The coldest day this winter was -22 degree Celsius. At this day, my girlfriend and I enjoyed a bath in the Jacuzzi which stands outside of her apartment building. The interesting part about this is that my hair got wet and not before long my hair was frozen. I can tell you that is a really awkward feeling

Normally, I do not have a problem when it is cold, but because of the bad isolation the temperature in my apartment went several times below 10 degree Celsius. With the additional heating I have the average temperature in my room was around 14 degrees Celsius, but to save money (I’m a student after all) I did not use this heating all day and night. Fortunately, I have a girlfriend who was kind enough to give my asylum several times a week.