scoolover
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2006
- Messages
- 1,386
First and foremost, how awful to hear about Ryan Shay. It kind of makes me feel a little guilty about having such a great day.
Anyway, as an ameture photographer, I feel ashamed at what a horrible job I did with my photographs today. Instead of going in manual mode, I set it on auto so I would not have to think too much. 90% of my pictures were blurry due to the overcast day. Lesson number 1 in shooting sports is to shoot in a quick shutter speed but the dark day caused the auto to shoot slowly to let in more light. Sorry about the poor quality of pictures.
I woke up at 4:00am with my girlfriend. We live about 130 miles from Central Park and wanted to be there by 7:15ish. Figuring on light traffic at that time of day, we set out for the big city (which scares me as I am a country boy). The directions were perfect and we arrived at a close parking garage at about 7:25.
I had done some great planning but apparantly the planning did not involve packing my map of the city or the race route. Being that the trials were essentially 5 loops around the park, I decided a few weeks ago that we would hang around 72nd street and go back and forth to see the runners a possible 10 times. We entered the park on the east side and immediately saw the race course. By now it was 7:50 and the race had started 15 minutes before. We were going to see the runners for the first time at about the 5 1/2 mile mark. About 15 minutes before they came there were probably 100 people within eye shot of us. 10 minutes before they came there were about 1000. Everyone and their brother were doing the same thing I wanted to do but they all started on the other side so they could see them at the 2 mile mark.
The TV helicopter overhead was a great indicator that the runners were approaching. A few minutes later the first group of runners came by. To be quite honest, I was too busy snapping away to notice who was where but in a few minutes all the big names passed. Hall, Culpepper, Meb and Sell who was pretty far off the pace. There were a lot of Hansen Project jerseys in the crowd. After a few minutes of runners passing an ambulance passed going the opposite direction from the runners and then a police emergency vehicle followed. We found out why later.
We headed to the other side of the park to see them pass there but were too late. We had about 10 minutes to go east to west because there were only about 2 miles of race course to the south of us. Going west to east gave us more time as there was more course north of us. Even though we were late, you could feel a buzz whenever runners were around. People were running everywhere and rumors were floating throughout the crowd. "This guy dropped out, this guy is hurting. Webb broke away on the hill". It was great.
At mile 15 there was a 5 person lead group. By mile 17 Webb had a 30 second lead. By mile 19 the race was won and there was no body there with any doubt. At the same mile 19 Sell was running with Meb in 4/5 place. He had made a move to get back in the hunt for a place in Bejing.
We decided to head to the finish line and perhaps catch the finish. With a powerful zoom lens, my goal was to get beyond the finish line and get pictures of the top 3 finishing. Boy was I nieve. To go about 100 yards to the finish we had to walk 3/4 mile around a closed off field. Had I been alone, I would have done what everyone else did and hop the fence to get to the finish line more quickly but I wasn't alone. We couldn't get even close because we were on the inside or the course. Had we been on the outside, we would have been golden and found a nice spot in the bleachers. On the inside people were everywhere. On porto-potties, in trees, in bleachers, on bleachers, under bleachers. We found a nice spot behind the bleachers.
We had no view but could hear the crowd start to roar. I pretty much pointed the camera and took pictures of Hall finishing up the last hill about 150 yards before the finish line. I saw him a little pumping his fists and pointing at the crowd. It was intense. Next in was Ritzenheim. I must plead guilty to being unprepared or ignorant here. I had no clue who he was or why he was comming in second, even though he was with the leaders all the way. The third one in was the crowd favorite Sell. Everyone loved this guy. Perhaps it was the article on Running Times on him and his blue collar job at Home Depot. If anyone got the crowd buzzing, it was he.
Since the finish line thing didn't work out all that well, we decided to go and see about getting a picture at the awards ceramony. Guess what? We got there about 5 minutes after they finished it. Another mess up. Oh well. Even though I screwed up on many of the logistics, the day was awesome. I will put this done as something that I will remember forever. I hope they have it in NYC again in 4 years. Count me in.
After that was all over we went to the WTC site because I had not been there since 9/11. It was pretty quiet and somber. We hit the 6 train uptown and did way too much walking but we were still out of the city by 2:00. It was quite a full day.
Me when we arrived. It was dark! I am not that goofy looking in real life.
The lead pack on the first trip around
The emergency vehicle
I guess this was around the 15 mile mark
Sell in the middle a ways off the lead.
The crowd
Another around 15 miles
Sell on the comeback trail
Hall at mile 17ish. Boy did he drop the pack.
Ritzenheim at mile 17 in a solid 2nd
4/5 place. A former silver metalist and perhaps a future silver metalist?
The area we had to walk around to get to the finish line.
People under, over and behind
Hall at the finish. He is the one in the top middle pointing at the crowd. We were about 10 rows back behind the bleachers.
When everyone left, we could get a great view of the finish.
The WTC site
Anyway, as an ameture photographer, I feel ashamed at what a horrible job I did with my photographs today. Instead of going in manual mode, I set it on auto so I would not have to think too much. 90% of my pictures were blurry due to the overcast day. Lesson number 1 in shooting sports is to shoot in a quick shutter speed but the dark day caused the auto to shoot slowly to let in more light. Sorry about the poor quality of pictures.
I woke up at 4:00am with my girlfriend. We live about 130 miles from Central Park and wanted to be there by 7:15ish. Figuring on light traffic at that time of day, we set out for the big city (which scares me as I am a country boy). The directions were perfect and we arrived at a close parking garage at about 7:25.
I had done some great planning but apparantly the planning did not involve packing my map of the city or the race route. Being that the trials were essentially 5 loops around the park, I decided a few weeks ago that we would hang around 72nd street and go back and forth to see the runners a possible 10 times. We entered the park on the east side and immediately saw the race course. By now it was 7:50 and the race had started 15 minutes before. We were going to see the runners for the first time at about the 5 1/2 mile mark. About 15 minutes before they came there were probably 100 people within eye shot of us. 10 minutes before they came there were about 1000. Everyone and their brother were doing the same thing I wanted to do but they all started on the other side so they could see them at the 2 mile mark.
The TV helicopter overhead was a great indicator that the runners were approaching. A few minutes later the first group of runners came by. To be quite honest, I was too busy snapping away to notice who was where but in a few minutes all the big names passed. Hall, Culpepper, Meb and Sell who was pretty far off the pace. There were a lot of Hansen Project jerseys in the crowd. After a few minutes of runners passing an ambulance passed going the opposite direction from the runners and then a police emergency vehicle followed. We found out why later.
We headed to the other side of the park to see them pass there but were too late. We had about 10 minutes to go east to west because there were only about 2 miles of race course to the south of us. Going west to east gave us more time as there was more course north of us. Even though we were late, you could feel a buzz whenever runners were around. People were running everywhere and rumors were floating throughout the crowd. "This guy dropped out, this guy is hurting. Webb broke away on the hill". It was great.
At mile 15 there was a 5 person lead group. By mile 17 Webb had a 30 second lead. By mile 19 the race was won and there was no body there with any doubt. At the same mile 19 Sell was running with Meb in 4/5 place. He had made a move to get back in the hunt for a place in Bejing.
We decided to head to the finish line and perhaps catch the finish. With a powerful zoom lens, my goal was to get beyond the finish line and get pictures of the top 3 finishing. Boy was I nieve. To go about 100 yards to the finish we had to walk 3/4 mile around a closed off field. Had I been alone, I would have done what everyone else did and hop the fence to get to the finish line more quickly but I wasn't alone. We couldn't get even close because we were on the inside or the course. Had we been on the outside, we would have been golden and found a nice spot in the bleachers. On the inside people were everywhere. On porto-potties, in trees, in bleachers, on bleachers, under bleachers. We found a nice spot behind the bleachers.
We had no view but could hear the crowd start to roar. I pretty much pointed the camera and took pictures of Hall finishing up the last hill about 150 yards before the finish line. I saw him a little pumping his fists and pointing at the crowd. It was intense. Next in was Ritzenheim. I must plead guilty to being unprepared or ignorant here. I had no clue who he was or why he was comming in second, even though he was with the leaders all the way. The third one in was the crowd favorite Sell. Everyone loved this guy. Perhaps it was the article on Running Times on him and his blue collar job at Home Depot. If anyone got the crowd buzzing, it was he. Since the finish line thing didn't work out all that well, we decided to go and see about getting a picture at the awards ceramony. Guess what? We got there about 5 minutes after they finished it. Another mess up. Oh well. Even though I screwed up on many of the logistics, the day was awesome. I will put this done as something that I will remember forever. I hope they have it in NYC again in 4 years. Count me in.
After that was all over we went to the WTC site because I had not been there since 9/11. It was pretty quiet and somber. We hit the 6 train uptown and did way too much walking but we were still out of the city by 2:00. It was quite a full day.
Me when we arrived. It was dark! I am not that goofy looking in real life.
The lead pack on the first trip around
The emergency vehicle
I guess this was around the 15 mile mark
Sell in the middle a ways off the lead.
The crowd
Another around 15 miles
Sell on the comeback trail
Hall at mile 17ish. Boy did he drop the pack.
Ritzenheim at mile 17 in a solid 2nd
4/5 place. A former silver metalist and perhaps a future silver metalist?
The area we had to walk around to get to the finish line.
People under, over and behind
Hall at the finish. He is the one in the top middle pointing at the crowd. We were about 10 rows back behind the bleachers.
When everyone left, we could get a great view of the finish.
The WTC site
