A Preview of the NYC Marathon

As part of my 13 half marathons in 2011, I knew I would have to do two half marathons in one month. But I don't know what possessed me to do them in the same weekend. The 13.1 New York Half Marathon, which my cousin G ran last year, was on Saturday, 2 April. The More Half Marathon, which I have run before, was on Sunday, 3 April. I did them both. I made a NYC running weekend out of it! And it was a good weekend for running. Overall the weather was cool, but sunny. More importantly, there was great crowd support at both races. It really does help. Great crowds and great volunteers! And in Central Park, I saw NBC's Al Roker. It looked like he was taking a nice walk around the park, while we were running past.

The More Half Marathon is old terrain for me. It's two loops of Central Park. What made it different this time around was instead of running clockwise, we ran counter-clockwise. It may not seem all that earth-shattering, but it does change the composition of the hill at the north end of Central Park. When you run clockwise, the hill is long and gradual with a bit of flat in between. Running counter-clockwise, the hill was long and steeper, with no flat anywhere . You crest the top and then you have a little downhill. Normally, I would like the challenge. But the fact was on Sunday, my legs were sore from Saturday. In fact, I was very tempted to just stay in bed Sunday morning and forgo the run. I ran, just not that fast.

So why were my legs sore? Part of it was the 13.1 miles I ran the day before. The half was flat, with some small minor hills, that looped in and around Flushing Meadows. I'm not all to familiar with Queens, so this run was a fun revelation in some ways. I got to see Citi Field, The Queens Art Museum, Arthur Ashe Stadium, the big globe, and even a couple of rockets ships (I still don't know what museum or exhibit they were part of, but they were there).

It might have been a bit of arrogance on my part, but I thought the flat course would treat my legs well. And they did. I actually finished faster than I thought I would with a time just under 2:18. It was still 9 minutes longer than my PR, but I guess this early in the season and with my sporadic training, my legs weren't going to bounce back as quickly as I imagined. On Sunday, I did the 13.1 miles in just under 2:33. If you add up the times I did 26.2 miles in a total of about 4:51 minutes (and with a good night's sleep included). This might not bode well for my goal of doing the NYC Marathon in under 4:30.