THE DAILY ARDMOREITE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2003 3E

RUNNING/CALENDAR/FOOTBALL
Ardmore runner to be in NYC Marathon

By Bill Baker
SPORTS WRITER

        Believing with the Frank Sinatra classic that, “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”, Ardmore’s Tim Vandagriff is heading to New York City, .a.k.a., “The Big Apple,” to realize a dream. Vandagriff and his wife, Georgia, are indeed “leaving today” so that he can be one of the 30,000- plus people that will participate in the New York City Marathon on Sunday.
        The race starts at the Verrazano Narrows Bridge every year in November in New York City at 10:10 a.m. The 26 mile, 38 yard race is run entirely within New York and takes the participants through five Burroughs of the city — Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan. It finishes, as it has for years, at the Tavern on the Green in Central Park.
        “The experience will rank right up there with some of the finest things to ever happen in my life,” Vandagriff said. “There is nothing like being a part of something like this. The fans are loud all along the route. Hundreds of thousands of fans are along the course to cheer you on and provide encouragement.”
        "My primary goal, of course, is to start and finish the race. My secondary goal is to feel good when I cross the finish line, and thirdly I would like to accomplish some time goals for myself. It’s a tough course, and I know it will be difficult to go up there and run my best time ever in a marathon. We’re told to take our best half marathon time, double it and then add about 10 minutes to it because it’s in New York.”
        Running marathons isn’t something new to Vandagriff, age 50, an engineer at Michelin. He has been running for about 10 years now, and he has completed six marathons in all. He has four White Rock Marathons in Dallas, the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon and the San Diego Marathon under his belt.
        Vandagriff, who trains almost exclusively at Regional Park, runs about 55 miles per week in readying himself for a marathon. He has a 4-mile and a 5-mile route mapped out at the park that allows him to gauge his times and splits. What was at one time an 18-week plan to prepare for a marathon, Vandagriff has reduced to a 14-week schedule of late.
        "I actually started running with my dog, and it developed from that,” Vandagriff said. “I ran in the Chigger Chase 5K run, and it was all I could do to just finish it because I went out too fast. I didn’t understand the importance of pacing myself. But now when I get off my job at Michelin at 4 p.m. every day, I come out here and run. It’s become a part of my life, and normally I will put in between 20 to 30 miles per week on a regular basis.
        “The elite runners have no problems being able to qualify to run at New York. The rest of us, who don’t have these great qualifying times, are put in a lottery system. They pull your name out of a hat, and you get an invitation. If you are passed over three years in a row, you get an automatic entry to run. That’s how I qualified for this year’s race.”
        Vandagriff’s daughter lives in Brooklyn, and he and his wife plan on staying with her during the visit. He plans on taking a chartered bus to the starting line, where everyone will be lined up literally elbow to elbow awaiting the race’s start. Wheelchair participants leave about an hour prior to the 10:10 time, and everyone is grouped by color codes. Prizes are awarded by age brackets. Since Vandagriff expects a cool morning on Sunday (about 50 degrees), he has made plans to accommodate both the cool weather and his energy needs.       
        “I will probably wear my running clothes and put some sweatpants and a hooded jacket over them,” Vandagriff said. “When I get started and get warmed up, I will discard the sweat pants and jacket. They have volunteers who come along, collect the clothes and give them to homeless people or other agencies.
        “I know I’ll have a lot of nervous energy, so I’ll need to go out and run about three easy miles Thursday and Friday. Right before the race, I’ll eat a couple of Power-Gels because they’re filled with lots of carbohydrates. And just before the starting gun, I’ll eat one final Power-Gel and drink some Gatorade. On the evening before they have a big pasta meal for the runners in which they serve a lot of rice, potatoes, fruit and vegetables to help get everyone prepared. The final three days before a marathon, nutrition is a key consideration because you have to build up carbs for energy if you expect to make it all the way.”
        Vandagriff knows all about “the wall,” a time that comes somewhere around the 20- to23-mile mark in every marathon for most runners. Although he has been able to get through “the wall” in each of his races, he remembers times when he wasn’t sure he would be able to make it.
        “One year I couldn’t have made it had it not have been for a great spectator,” Vandagriff said. “I was cramping in places I didn’t know I had. I made it over to him and just hung on him for several minutes. He was understanding and kind and let me get re-oriented. After I rested on him awhile, I was able to go on and finish up the final two or three miles of the race. Spectators at marathons are great people."
        “It’s very important to go out in a marathon, especially one like New York with all the people and hoopla, and run within yourself. If you try to run too fast at the start, you’ll run completely out of energy in no time. Finishing a marathon is not a given, and you’ve got to prepare yourself properly to be able to make it the entire distance. Since I train mostly on concrete and that’s what I’ll be running on in New York, I hope that will be an advantage to me.”
        After running in a marathon, Vandagriff advises to allow about a week before running again. And after the New York Marathon, he expects to gradually build back up to training miles since he hopes to run in this years White Rock Marathon in Dallas in December.
        “This is the first time I have planned to run two marathons with such little rest in between,” Vandagriff said. “A lot of people do just two marathons a year. Others are able to run in four or five. I’m hoping to be able to finish in New York, use good judgment and be ready to run in Dallas about five weeks later. That’s another goal I’ve set for myself:”
        Vandagriff has his Asics running shoes freshly washed, dried and ready for Sunday. His goal is to finish around the 3:42 mark. For runners, the New York City Marathon is one of the top races in the World. Few events can compare to it or its size and grandeur. And this year Ardmore’s Tim Vandagriff is “going to be a part of it.”

Local runner finishes, places in New York City Marathon

By Bill Baker
SPORTS WRITER

        Ardmore ’s ‘Tim Vandagriff competed in, and finished, this year’s New York City Marathon which was run on Nov. 2.
        Vandagriff was among 34,703 runners that made it the entire distance, 26 miles, 385 yards, from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge’ through all five Burroughs of New York City and finished at the famous Tavern on the Green in Central Park.
        Vandagriff finished the race at 4:04.11. He was number 9,257 to cross the line overall, and was number 7,463 among all male runners. He ranked at No. 561 in his age category and established a 9:19 pace during the race.
        Vandagriff and the other runners were cheered on by greater than 2 million spectators along the route. Amazingly only about 500 runners did not finish the race. According to Vandagriff, the encouragement and noise by the spectators helped him because of the hilly nature of the course, especially in the second half of the race.
        “There were times the noise was deafening,” Vandagriff said. “I knew there were hills, because I had read up on the race. Thank goodness I did because I knew what to expect. The first half wasn’t so bad, but the second half of the race had some very long, steep hills. They’re the kind you just can’t find around here (in southern Oklahoma) in order to train on. Most of the bridges had huge slopes to them and they were difficult as well.”
        “Early in the, race I. knew I wouldn’t be able to reach my time goals, so I decided to just run along and enjoy it. The huge number of runners, especially at the start, caused a slow start, and the temperature was about 20 degrees above normal for New York City In fact, I was told it was the warmest day for the race in about 15 years. Plus there was high humidity that day. And that hurt a lot of peoples’ times.”
        All the runners in the marathon are grouped by colors, and all the colors merge together at about mile eight. By then some thinning out of the runners has taken place. Through Brooklyn the course was pretty flat, according to Vandagriff but once he crossed the Queensboro Bridge and got into Manhattan, things changed.
        “It really got hilly once we hit Manhattan,” Vandagriff said. “I made it pretty good the first 17 miles, but about mile 18 it started getting difficult. I got some cramps in my legs at mile 24, and I had to stop a minute or two and rub them down. There were tons of runners at the 24-mile mark that were walking and just trying to finish.
        “Once you hit 5th Avenue parallel to Central Park, the hills got really tough. The finish line is at the end of about a half mile incline. Any hill at this point is a struggle. As soon as you cross the line they give you your finishing medal, a baggie with fruit and other food and they wrap you in an aluminum foil blanket. It’s important to keep moving as well. After that I had to walk about a mile to the truck that contained my personal belongings. Since the trucks are arranged alphabetically, I had to find truck 79 because I was in the ‘Vs.”
        According to Vandagriff, spectators along the course set up their own sections year after year to hand out drinks, like water and Gatorade. These individuals arrange for the drinks, tables and people to man the stations. It’s just another one of the ways the New York City fans support the event.
        “One of the problems at each water stop was we didn’t have anywhere to throw our cups once we took a drink,” Vandagriff said. “At other races, we throw the cups to the right so they can get picked up. At New York, so many fans are crammed along the way; the only thing to do with the cup is just throw it down. Therefore, you had to take care at each water stop to not slip on the cups."
        “They attach a small computer chip to the top of your shoe and at four points along the race you cross over carpeted sections and it ‘beeps’ to record your time at that point in the race. That’s done to allow your family to see how you’re doing and to make sure everyone runs the entire race and doesn’t cheat.”
        Vandagriff called the experience “the event of a lifetime” and believes it will be something he and his family and friends will talk about for a long time.       
        “It was an awesome event,” Vandagriff said. “Just the magnitude of the number of runners was unbelievable. It’s hard to explain what it felt like to have that many spectators along the route. It was special for me.”
        Results of the race are posted on the Web site of the New York Roadrunners Club at www.nyrrc.org. Vandagriff’s number (12626) can be accessed from the home page. From there, you can take a simulated run with him from start to finish. There are also plenty of pictures and mile-by- mile commentary of the race.

Editor’s Note — Bill Baker can be e-mailed at bill.baker@ardmoreite.com.