Tips for Enjoying Saratoga Race Course

Tomorrow is my favorite day of the year – it’s when track announcer Tom Durkin and the entire crowd at Saratoga Race Course join together to announce “And they’re off at Saratoga” as, for the 141st time, the horses spring from the gate for the first race of the meet, which runs 36 days through Labor Day.

The mere fact that you’re reading this means I probably don’t have to explain to you why so many horse racing fans of all stripes consider the Saratoga race meet to be heaven on earth. So instead the focus of this blog post is to provide some tips on how best to enjoy it, from someone who has visited Saratoga every summer for 34 years.

Where to Stay

For many, the only place to consider staying is in the city of Saratoga, and there are many fine, though expensive, choices there. For those willing to drive a little bit to and from the track each day to save $100 or more per night on a room, you will find outstanding, moderately priced lodging at each of the Hampton Inn at Clifton Park (10 miles south), the Century House in Latham (15 miles south) and the Desmond, (north of Albany, about 20 miles south of the track).


The Crowds

Some people love big crowds and packed restaurants; others prefer to attend when things are more staid. While Saratoga is never really quiet during the racing season, the town and racetrack are most crowded on Opening Day (July 29), and during the ten days preceding and including Travers weekend (August 19 to 30). The quietest weekends are the first one (August 1 & 2) and Labor Day (Sept 5 to 7).

Families

Saratoga is famous for its picnic tables in the backyard, which offer a terrific view of the horses entering and circling the paddock where they are saddled. However, it is a long walk to the track to see the horses race. Arrive very early and stake out a spot on the picnic tables at the top of the stretch, where you watch the horses duel at the most critical juncture of the race.

Tickets

You can buy general admission to the grandstand or Clubhouse at the gate. If you want reserved seats, they go on sale at 8 a.m. at the booth at Gate A on Union Avenue. But to get the best reserved seats, buy them on eBay, where they are usually available at a reasonable mark-up.

Parking at the Track

Savvy baseball fans park near the exit to the stadium lot, so they are first out after the game. So it is with Saratoga, where on a crowded day, a five-minute walk will save you 25 minutes of fighting traffic afterwards, and a few dollars as well. Many of the homes near Nelson Avenue let you park on their lawns for $5 - $15; the closer to the track, the more it costs, and the longer it takes to escape. If you are driving to Saratoga from the south, take exit 13N from the Northway (Rte 87) rather than Exit 14, and take a right on Crescent Avenue up to Nelson.

Breakfast / Backstretch Tour

What they say about this is really true – for the novice racing fan, there is no better way to experience Saratoga than eating breakfast at the rail and watching the morning workouts, and taking a tram tour of the backstretch.

Nightlife

Saratoga’s main street, Broadway, is bustling most nights of the week during the racing meet, and has dozens of fine restaurants and lively nightlife establishments, with something to suit everyone’s taste, and always a slew of new openings each season.

The Starting Gate Sports Bar, the Ole Bryan Inn and the Parting Glass are three of my favorites.

Must Visits

On every visit, I drive ten miles out of town on Route 29, in Greenwich, NY, you’ll find The Hand Melon Farm, which grows and sells the best cantaloupe melon you will ever find. It also sells other fruits and vegetables grown on the property. A short distance further up the road, you’ll find The Ice Cream Man, which sells outrageously good ice cream made in the shop.

Saratoga State Park is stunningly beautiful with its tall pine trees, and offers a great place for running, walking or biking.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center offers an eclectic calendar of artists, including Bruce Springsteen on August 25. Spots on the lawn offer a decent view at a bargain price of $41 for the rock concerts.

To see how the other half lives, be sure to drive by the mansions on Broadway, out past Route 29/50.

Web Links

Visit the official Web sites for Saratoga, as well as for the local newspapers, in advance to get a sense of the local flavor.

The Saratoga Chamber of Commerce has info on where to eat & stay and what to do.

Saratoga Race Course is operated by the New York Racing Association; visit its official Web site.

The Saratoga Special is a terrific, free publication available ubiquitously in town, and also available online for (free) registered users.

The Albany Times Union offers some of the best coverage of all aspects of racing at Saratoga. Here are links to its blogs about the Racing, the town from the perspective of shop and restaurant owners, and a newsy blog about goings on in town.

The Saratogian is the local newspaper.

My favorite Web site is Equidaily, which offers a great roundup of horse racing coverage and advice about Saratoga.

Well Blog Fail: One PB&J Doesn't Fit All

The New York Times Well Blog recently hosted a conversation with a fitness guru about eating before a run.

Anyone who read this, and who has read my “Ten Tips for First-Time Marathoners” should have immediately thought, “uh-oh.”

Leslie Bonci, the sports nutritionist consulted by the Times, gives some good advice. As my Tip #9 says, you should think of food “as part of your equipment,” or to put it another way, as fuel that powers your body. But as to her detailed advice on exactly what, and when, to eat…

Re-read Tip #1 (this time in caps): BEWARE OF ONE SIZE FITS ALL ADVICE.

Bonci instructs Times readers to eat “a peanut butter and jelly wrap cut into little pieces” an hour before exercise. That might work well for Bonci, but I recently ran the Fairfield Half Marathon three hours after eating a peanut butter sandwich. Suffice to say that I was repeatedly reminded of what I ate for breakfast as I plowed through the hills of Fairfield. And visited a porta-potty for the first time ever during a race. Three times. And struggled to breathe up the steep hills because of gooey peanut butter lining... you get the point.

The comments section of the Bonci post particularly concerns me – and proves my point. Commenter Sharon writes, “Wow, I do everything wrong!” and then describes a routine that doesn’t fit Bonci’s advice. But it may well work for Sharon, and now she’s going to change her routine to what works for Bonci. Amazingly, Well Blog editor Tara Parker-Pope replies, “You’re not alone… I’m doing everything wrong too!” So, the writer of Well Blog and the bulk of its readers, have suddenly discovered they’re “doing everything wrong” after years of successful exercise, because they don’t do everything exactly like Bonci does? Well Blog Fail.

Everyone is different. You need to trust your own body and experience, not the word of experts. A few years ago, a fitness guru sent me and 600 other first-time marathoners an email saying that stretching is all but unnecessary for long distance runners. This may be true for him, but if I don’t stretch for two days, I can’t even walk without intense pain, and I stretch for hours in the 24 hours leading up to a race.

To take another example, once I was advising two small-framed women on their first marathon, I asked an experienced small-framed woman marathoner to give them advice on hydration. Why? Because I perspire heavily and weigh 200 lbs., and so I consume 1.5 gallons of fluid during a marathon, as repeated experience has told me this is the right amount for me. If these women followed my routine, they might drown, and I can't begin to guess what amount of fluid was proper for them.

I have some recommendations on eating for a race – I eat continuously the night before, and snack lightly on granola bars and orange slices as I run – but you need to test out different strategies when you train. You’re the only expert on your own body.

 If your body chokes up when you chew granola, or orange slices, or peanut butter, ditch them and try something else, and when you find what works, stick with it, no matter what I, Ms. Bonci, or the Well Blog may say.

Assassins and their Fatal Fictions

FindingDulcinea's "On This Day" for July 2 contains several fascinating, little-known facts about the assassination of President Garfield. One that struck me was the defense asserted by assassin Charles Guiteau at his trial: “Some of these days instead of saying ‘Guiteau the assassin’, they will say ‘Guiteau the patriot.’”

Guiteau believed that the murder was an act in the public interest. This belief is hardly exceptional as assassins go. Self-delusion of a noble, heroic purpose is a common thread connecting murderous lone actors of history.

What convinces an assassin that he’s a national hero? How does one man, out of so many millions who might share similar political beliefs and passions, conclude that it is his destiny to commit murder for the greater good?

Guiteau defended his action as “a political necessity,” and was so confident of general approbation that he instructed General William Tecumseh Sherman, “I am going to the Jail. Please order out your troops and take possession of the Jail at once.”

A prior findingDulcinea “On This Day” about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln reveals a similar theme, as John Wilkes Booth was shocked at the public’s grief and failure to applaud the murder. His letters provide disturbing insight into his motivations, such as this excerpt printed by the New York Times: “When a country like this spurns justice from her side, She forfeits the allegiance of every honest freeman, and should leave him untrammeled by any fealty soever, to act, as his conscience may approve.”

The recent assassination of abortion doctor George Tiller once again echoed this same sad, deluded tale. Although many tried to link the murder to the heated rhetoric of our cable news culture, only one man translated this passion into violence.

FindingDulcinea Senior Writer Shannon Firth analyzed Tiller's murder and explored the motives of assassins, detailing the three types categorized by author Kris Hollington. There are “wolves,” who seek notoriety, “jackals,” who are hired hands, and finally “foxes,” who are “novices hoping to make a political statement.”

According to Hollington, these foxes are intensely passionate, but are also “ordinary, unremarkable people, often failures: the antithesis of the men and women they try to kill.” Although they justify their actions in political and often religious language, “it’s all within the troubled mind of the lone individual… almost a movie in their mind.”

Do their personal failures, then, prod them towards an alternate reality, in which they can play the film-star heroes? John Hinckley, Jr., possibly inspired by the movie Taxi Driver, believed that by shooting Ronald Reagan he could win the love of actress Jodie Foster. He later explained himself, according to PBS, with this rumination on fiction: “The line dividing life and art can be invisible. After seeing enough hypnotizing movies and reading enough magical books, a fantasy life develops which can either be harmless or quite dangerous.”

I suppose heroism, and even history, is always something of a fiction, a combination of reality and the myths built around it. But I can’t stop wondering what it takes to push an individual into a myth so fatal, so extreme, and so disconnected from the society he believes he is saving.

Parenting, Not Lecturing

Reading findingDulcinea’s recent article on what parents should know about teen dating reminded me of Otto Frank's remarks when he first read his daughter Anne Frank’s diary in the 1960s:

“For me, it was a revelation. There, was revealed a completely different Anne to the child that I had lost. I had no idea of the depths of her thoughts and feelings.”

Isn't this what every father reading his daughter's diary would think?

So, short of reading a diary, how do fathers (and mothers) learn the depths of their children’s thoughts and feelings? And how can parents use this knowledge to safely steer their teenagers past the risks that confront today’s teens?

I don’t want to set myself up as a parenting guru, out of fear that my Internet-savvy daughters will post a counterpoint in the comment section. But that findingDulcinea article confirmed many of the strategies and insights I’ve stumbled upon while raising kids.

First off, I’ve found that an “open dialogue” is, as the article says, essential. Don’t do all the talking. Or even most of it. Ask questions – their answers might surprise you. More importantly, behave as if there is no "right" answer, and no repercussions for the "wrong" answer. Listen to and reflect on their responses, and then act on them.

Heatedly lecturing them about drugs or sex, for example, is often counter-productive. Before you try to scare them, ask about the landscape they encounter and how they feel about it. For all you know, your kid may be struggling not with drugs or alcohol, but with fitting in as someone who doesn’t use them. In that case, she’d need support, coping strategies, and a sympathetic ear more than a threatening harangue.

And, having felt invincible myself at age 16, I always attributed reckless teen behavior to illusions of invulnerability, but a recent study found the opposite can be true. A shocking number of teens simply don't care about their safety because they believe they will die by age 35. Imagine shouting at an irresponsible teen that she wasn't invincible, only to discover that her recklessness stemmed from hopeless fatalism. Ask about the problem before you try to solve it.

Another way to build trust with your teen is through “ground rules” – for both child and parent. Your kids should understand what you consider unacceptable behavior, but should also feel they can come to you when there’s a real problem. Everyone makes mistakes, and your son or daughter is not only a human being, but one still very much developing. Who survives adolescence without a crisis or three? And when that crisis comes, they need to turn to you, without worrying about the repercussions, or else you may only found out about the crisis from someone else, and when it’s too late to do much about it.

For instance, if they’re stranded somewhere drunk or high or just in a troubling situation, it’s more important that they get home safely than that they get grounded for a month. Let them know that they can call you with immunity. The very act of picking up the phone to ask for help is an admission of wrongdoing, and, for their safety, you need to accept it as their apology.

That said, they should still take such situations seriously. If they’re calling you for help often, then there’s a bigger problem to address, and one that requires both vigilance and consequences. Some parents even make contracts with their teens, so that each party acknowledges its own responsibilities.

I don’t have all of the answers, and neither do you. But, as another article stresses, a strong family support system can make the difference between a healthy and a troubled teen. That support system can only be built through great communication with your kids. Your role is not simply to impart wisdom learned from "when you were a kid." Things change, teens change, and things likely never were the way you remember them anyway.

A Casual Marathon: It's Relay for Life Season

You’ve read about my running, but you may not know that my passion for marathons was born in a tent on my local high school football field. Long before the Boston Marathon, I walked/ran the Relay for Life, and currently teams across the country are running and preparing to run in support of the American Cancer Society.

I love the challenge and rigor of a full-fledged marathon, but I know how daunting it can be. The Relay for Life is the perfect first step for people looking for the community and exhilaration of running for charity, but not prepared to abandon their hot chocolate by the fireplace for a grueling regime of winter training.

The 24-hour event requires no experience, and participants only have to keep one team member circling the track at all times. The rest of the team can cheer the others on or, of course, recharge in tents with vital doses of sugar and caffeine. The money raised supports cancer research and awareness, while the experience itself promotes community for cancer survivors and their supporters.

I can’t promise, though, that you’ll be able to stop there; as I’ve written before, marathon fever is surprisingly contagious. After the Relay for Life, I – along with five other findingDulcinea staffers – ran an incredible twelve-person, 181-mile, 26-hour Ragnar Relay. This amazing event may seem, well, miles beyond the Relay for Life, but it also welcomes novices and offers training programs for the beginner and the experienced runner alike. Take a look at their website, and, if you still need inspiration, read our reasons to run.

You can find your local Relay for Life here, along with other ways to get involved on the event’s main website. And just in case, you may want to check out our Web Guide to Running. Who knows? Maybe next year the Boston Marathon won’t seem quite so far-fetched.

Ten Tips for First-Time Marathoners, from a Former Fat Guy

Most marathon advice is given by tall, thin people who run 3,000 miles per year. It sounds great in theory, but can be unrealistic for mere mortals to follow. I do not fit the prototype of a marathon runner. When I began training for my 1st marathon in 2004, I was significantly overweight, and even on race day, I was 30 pounds overweight, walked a lot, and struggled on severely cramping legs to barely finish, in 5:12. The next 2 marathons were similar - started training way overweight, was too heavy even on race day, and improved modestly each time. Last year, I again started training way too heavy, but this time I lost 31 pounds for my November race, improved by 36 minutes, and have since trained steadily, losing more weight and nearly breaking 4 hours in the Boston Marathon in April. I’m still a normal person, leading a normal life with a normal diet, but I’ve figured out how to do so and yet compete successfully in marathons. And how to guide others through the process as well - I now count 15 people, including three brothers, who have successfully completed their first marathon with my encouragement and advice. If you’ve ever thought about running a marathon, but don’t want to trade your social life and family time for an austerity diet of bird food and daily three-hour runs, I have the top ten tips to get you safely across the finish line.

1. Beware of One Size Fits All Advice

The universe of people training for their first marathon includes men and women, teens and seniors, gymnasts and linebackers, athletes and couch potatoes. Beware the gurus who think they have The One Approach to training for a marathon that will work for all. And what worked for your friend may not work for you. Always test advice, even the advice found in our Web Guide to Running, and adjust it to fit your body and circumstances.

2. Create a Detailed and Realistic Plan

You won’t become a marathon runner overnight. I’ve covered before the difficulty of keeping resolutions, and a plan, created with reasonable expectations in mind, is essential to staying on track. Writing down incremental goals and planning how you will gradually intensify your training will help keep you going. Each tick-off of the check list will be one further encouragement to conquer the next un-ticked goal. Besides, it’s easier to rationalize laziness in your head than to make excuses to a piece of paper.

3. Include Cross-Training in that Detailed Plan

I owe one of my biggest running breakthroughs to a pair of boxing gloves. As I’ve mentioned before, an early-morning boxing boot camp revolutionized my marathon training, and helped me knock off 31 pounds and 36 minutes. Varying your exercise routine can improve your overall fitness and flexibility, while giving your running muscles a break. And, in addition to strengthening different muscle groups and reducing the risk of injury, the image of you in boxing gloves should do wonders for your reputation. For more, see findingDulcinea’s article on cross-training.

4. Make Training an Integral Part of Your Life

A marathon is not a throwaway task, done after the dishes are washed and the kids are asleep – and the training for it can’t be treated that way either. You don’t have to make running your life, but you should make it a habit, an essential part of your daily routine. My life is busy, even chaotic, and I would never get in shape if I only exercised when everything else was done. You sleep, you eat breakfast, you go to meetings, you shower… and you run. Don’t accept excuses to skip your run; does a bad day at the office excuse you from brushing your teeth?

5. Find Training Buddies

From Don Quixote to the Wizard of Oz to the Lord of the Rings, any classic quest film will tell you that all great journeys require companions. Although my friends are fully equipped with hearts, brains, and courage, they see me to finish line after finish line as surely as Dorothy’s friends escorted her to the end of the Yellow Brick Road. I’ve written before and I’ll say it again: running partners are essential. Friendly competition with co-workers at my previous company first coaxed me back into the running habit. One findingDulcinea writer first encouraged me to try boxing and kept me going back, and another kept me, quite literally, on my toes during my weekly long runs. And as proud as I was when my brothers called me to announce better and better training times – after I had personally lured them into the contagious running craze – I could not help becoming competitive with them. Without sharing our accomplishments, we would never have achieved them.

6. You Will Be Frustrated, Then Astounded, by Your Progress

The first part of your training will be discouraging. When you first push yourself to run further than you have before, your body will push back, and it won't get much easier for several months. You'll doubt that you’ll be able to complete your long runs, never mind the race itself. And then, about 8-10 weeks before the race, the clouds will part, the sun will glint off of your newly-sculpted legs, and you will experience that breakthrough moment. You’ll suddenly improve in leaps and bounds each week, until finally you start saying silly things like "I never knew 15 miles could seem so easy."

7. And Once Astounded, Contentment is Thy Enemy

Sure, smug self-satisfaction feels good – even deserved – when you’ve lost that first 10 pounds or improved your time by half an hour. Perhaps, you complacently think, you can skip this week’s training for some TV, or replace your run at the gym with a late-night run to Ben & Jerry’s. Sorry, but no. As I’ve told you before, now is exactly when you have to work harder. Whenever I begin to feel that creeping sense of contentment, I double my efforts, knowing that I’ll only slide backward if I don’t run forward. If it feels this good to shave off that first 10 pounds or 30 minutes, think how great it will be to lose the next 10 pounds – and how disappointing it would be to gain it all back.

8. Don’t Let Small Setbacks Cause Total Failure

You’re human. Over 18 weeks, you WILL bend. Don’t break. You will have three consecutive days where you are busy, hurt and tired and not run. The difference between success and failure here will be determined by whether you let these three days became ten. Draw a line in the sand and, after a few days back on your plan, it will be as though you never missed any training at all.

9. No Running on Empty

Nutrition is as important to successful running as training. Food is fuel, and you must approach it that way: when you’re eyeing that chili hot dog for lunch, remember that it won’t provide the energy you’ll need at mile 15. And empty calories will be excess baggage on your journey.
And you may not realize this on your 10-mile practice runs, but you also have to eat real food during the marathon. As I learned at the bottom of Heartbreak Hill, water and Gatorade alone won’t cut it in a 26-mile race. Ignore how foul “carbohydrate gel” sounds and learn to love them for long runs and the race. My personal favorite is the Hammer gel. And during the marathon, you’ll need to eat real food as well; granola bars and orange slices work for me. Don’t just accept my suggestions, though – you might do better with peanut butter packets, nuts, fruit, or a bagel. Test them out on your training runs, and find the food that best fuels you. Rather than wolfing down whatever snack you choose, eat it in small doses continually. Break up a granola bar into seven pieces and make it last seven miles. And eat continuously the night before the marathon, too, since you can’t wake up to a big breakfast. The night before I ran Philly, I did not stop eating; I was curled up like a rabbit with a granola bar for a carrot, trailing crumbs all over the pillow until I fell asleep. The next day, I felt fully energized, and beat my best time by 35 minutes.

10. Invite Your Cheerleaders

Cheerleaders provide more than just distraction during half-time, as you’ll learn when you become the athlete and your friends and family band together as your cheerleading squad. Even if you can’t coerce your friends into training with you, their support, encouragement, and even high expectations can spur you on to faster miles. As I’ve written before, my late brother James has been a constant inspiration, and when you hit mile 12, nothing can provide an extra burst of energy like the sight of your excited, cheering family. A support network is essential to a successful marathon.

For further tips, inspiration, videos, and interactive tools, see the findingDulcinea feature Training for Your First Marathon.

Five Seconds That Were Just Packed

I caught a late train into the city today. Penn Station was quiet as I got on the short escalator to exit the track area. Just in front of me, several commuters balked at the bottom of the escalator and stepped quickly to the side. I pushed ahead of them and saw that a man in his 60s had fallen backwards and was laying on his back on the escalator steps, and sliding down and bumping his head, with his wife two steps up, shrieking. I had actually encountered a similar situation a few years ago, when a woman tourist had fallen back over her luggage, and thought that, as I did back then, I would pull his shoulders up and forward and he'd get his legs under him and stand. I knelt down and put my arms under his shoulder blades to assist him up. Suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head, and he went fully limp in my arms. I thought he had just died. His wife was shouting for help while I was shouting at her to run up and hit the emergency off switch, but thinking it may not matter. Believing that I had two seconds to save a corpse from desecration, I broke every back safety rule for lifting, uhh, dead weight, pulled him nearly upright, and prayed I could somehow get his feet off the ground as they passed the exit step. As we were a step from the top, the escalator stopped abruptly, and my shoulder bumped into his head, jarring him awake. The now risen man walked off the escalator, as I supported him until I could prop him against a wall. A railroad worker came up the escalator with my bag, followed by four cops who grabbed onto the no-longer-recently-departed. I picked up my bag and walked to the office, with a seriously strained lower back and fervently hoping that these would be the most excitement-packed five seconds of the day.