Countdown: 13 days

Sunday, 10 a.m., gray, 40's. Umbrella Race in the Park 5k, 3 1/2 miles (best estimate).

Monday, 4 p.m., high 40's, spectacular fall day, with a sky so brilliantly blue it almost hurt to look at it. Gazette to Aqueduct, 4 miles.

With acorns scattered all over Central Park, Mayor Brian Stratton said "All big things start out as small things," or something like that, and off we went to start the first Umbrella Race in the Park 5k. All 35 of us. That made the Race in the Park field not that much smaller than the first Stockade-athon, for which 80 souls found the finish line.

We had no problem finding the finish line on Sunday, it was the rest of the course that was elusive. Not long after Mayor Stratton officially started the race, I settled into a spot behind one gentleman who stayed about 15 meters ahead of me, and there was another guy in a gray T-shirt another 20 meters ahead of him. We stuck together like that for over a mile in the middle of the race. Everytime I thought I was grinding away at the deficit, the guy in front of me stayed right where he was.

Then things got a little crazy. As will happen sometimes with first-time race organizers, the course wasn't marked as well as it could have been, and some of the marshals weren't real demonstrative in their directions. This is by no means a dig at this race. On the contrary, I applaud them for their initiative and good cheer. Their heart was in the right place, and I'm sure they'll have the kinks ironed out next year. If anything, it gave me a greater appreciation for how well organized events like the Freihofer's Run for Women, Mohawk Hudson River Marathon and Stockade-athon are.

Back to the race. The three of us were parading around the Duck Pond when Gray T-Shirt went up the hill toward Fehr Avenue, while me and the guy in front of me noticed that a course marshal in an orange vest was pointing to the path on our left. As we made the turn, I yelled, "YO, GRAY!!" to the guy going up the hill and jabbed my finger to the left.

Then it happened again, this time to all three of us, who ran about a quarter of a mile the wrong way, asked somebody where we were supposed to be, and turned around and backtracked that quarter mile back to where we were supposed to be. We ran around Iroquois Lake clockwise to the finish, and Gray T-Shirt was breathing hard behind me all the way. I'm thinking, "No WAY does this guy catch me," and he didn't. The first thing I did in the chute, though, was turn around and tell him, "If you didn't miss that turn, you had me all the way." It turns out he was Samuel Mercado of Albany, and he finished seventh overall (23:40), I was sixth (23:38) and God only knows what distance everyone else ran. Sam Mercado had a wrist-held GPS and figured out that we went 3 1/2 miles total. I finished with a 7:37 mile pace, after running a 6:52 first mile.

Oh, well. Nobody was mad. A bunch of us were chuckling about the course miscues. It was a great day to run, I got in a serious blowout and a nice woman asked me as I was leaving whether I had grabbed some cider and doughnuts over by the fire pit, which was cranking toasty in the middle of the pavilion. "I'm in training," I said, laughing at the sound of that. Soon, cider doughnuts, I will see you soon.

This afternoon, I hit the bikepath and was still pretty stiff and sore, so I just did a really slow recovery/maintenance jog under gorgeous conditions. Tuesday will be a day off, since I'll be in New York all day for the MAAC basketball media day at the ESPN Zone. After that, I need to come up with a gameplan, because I don't know what the best approach will be to these final 10 days of training (I'm not counting the day before the race, because I'll likely just do nothing that day). Should I do one more speed on the track? Should I do one more long run? Should I avoid hills to save my left heel and Achilles? I'm not a coach, so I'll be winging it here, just as I have been all along.

My health continues to be great, in the face of more reminders that some Faustian bargain has been struck. I saw "The Seafarer" at Capital Rep last week, and Sunday was my sister's birthday. Her married name is Mary Jo Hardy, but we've been calling her Jo since she was a little girl. Uh oh.

The movie quote of the day is "We got one!!" from Ghostbusters, set up by the fact that they played that clip on the scoreboard when the Albany River Rats scored a goal on Saturday night. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I played back a message on my work phone Monday afternoon, a day after I wrote a column about how the Stockade-athon still needs course marshals. Somebody called me looking to volunteer, and then I got another call like that. The power of the pen, people!