Two Street

As I mentioned yesterday, I ran the Two Street 5k this morning. The start of this race is at 2^nd St. (pronounced “Two Street”) and Reed, in the heart of South Philly. Like many things in S. Philly, it is a very low key (I had never heard of it before), neighborhood-oriented event. 2^nd Street is best known as the street where many of the string bands who play in the Mummers Parade on New Years Day have their headquarters, and indeed the Mummers Museum is located nearby on Washington Street. If you don’t know what Mummers are, where else to go but www.mummers.com. They are as much a Philadelphia institution as cheesesteak, the Liberty Bell, and Rocky, and are synonymous with drunken revelry, pageantry, and sometimes even good musicianship.

I had been asked to run as part of a team led by Bobby, who lives a few blocks from the start and was determined to field a winning team. Bobby has an alter-ego who posts as u2runner on the Philly Runners message board, whose identity had been the matter of some speculation. When he posted looking for “fast” runners to stock his team, the prospect of running the race and of meeting him, along with his offer to pay my entry fee, led me to bite and to assume, at least for a morning, the role of road whore.

Tony and I parked under I-95 and walked over to where Bobby lives. Along with me and him, the rest of the team consisted of Andy, a very good runner and regular on the local circuit who was a friend of Bobby’s family, and two of Bobby’s friends. The idea was that me and Andy would run well, and one of the others would run respectably and fill out the third scoring slot. We were “Team Shattered,” named, as I said yesterday, after the lyric “life’s just a cocktail party on the street.” And we all had matching blue t-shirts with the Stones’ lips logo on the front. Bobby asked me if I wanted the shirt with number 1 or number 2 on it. Of course I opted for number 1.

I’d guess about four or five hundred persons showed up for the race, most of them however were walking it and most of them lived within a mile radius of the race, and streamed from all directions to the start. At the start I saw Steve G., from Philly Runners and who lives close to the start, and Mickey R., from the evil empire of South Jersey AC but who grew up in South Philly, and we chatted as the 9:00, the scheduled start time, came and went. Then a little boy sang God Bless America, the local parish priest led a prayer, and the starting horn went off less than ten seconds after the amen sounded.

The course was a fast (there are no variations in altitude in S. Philly), long rectangle down 2^nd St and back up 3^rd Street, which merges into 2^nd Street (you gotta know it to understand that) about a mile from the finish. Not much to say about the race. After the usual boys who sprint out at the start cleared away, I was never challenged. My splits were 5:13; 5:22; and 6:06 (1.1 miles) for a finishing time of 16:41. The most interesting part of the race itself was watching the logistics of clearing a course through the tight grid of S. Philly streets upon which the course was laid. Cops were still towing parked cars off of the course when the race started, and, being in the lead, I had the dubious privilege of having a police escort who was diverted from his lead car duties several times to chase off cars that strayed on the course. A fair number of people were standing along the sidewalks in front of their houses and graciously cheered me on.

After finishing the race I ran back down the course to hook up with Tony and run him to the finish. This seemed to blow a lot of the spectators minds, who had just seen me race the other way. I didn’t even make it to the mile 2 marker when Tony came heading the other way, looking a lot more exhausted than I usually see him. From this point I just pushed him to keep running, even if it were a slow jog. We run by a cop who says he’s getting tired of seeing me. Despite his fatigue Tony still has enough for his trademark kick to the finish and gets a time of 32:10 – a full 4 minutes off of the PR he set at Stone Harbor two weeks ago!

Andy easily coasted into second about 30 seconds behind me, and Bobby and Mike both finished in around 20 minutes. We hung out a bit until the awards ceremony, where I got the largest trophy that I ever won for anything in my life. Bobby took home the equally big first place team trophy that Team Shattered won. He did a fine job of organizing the team and in a few years I could see him organizing this whole race. At 22, he’s also plugging away at his running and I’ll see him again at his inaugural PDR next week.

We said our good bye’s and I lugged my trophy to the car. It attracted a lot of attention as we headed down Dickinson St., and at one point literally stopped traffic as someone rolled down the window to ask what I won. An earlier episode, however, put that all in perspective. Just before we were about to take our leave from Bobby, a small trophy on the living room shelf instantly caught Tony’s eye. It was an Emmy award that Bobby’s brother had won for his role in putting on a local morning news show. It’s a moment when you realize that size truly doesn’t matter.

Pictures:














OMG, it's enormous!
















Best performance of the day goes to Tony.
















Team Shattered (minus Andy, guys in the light blue shirt and the tan shirt are race officials). And (for what you all came to see), Bobby is the guy holding the trophy