I'm glad it's the last race of my season (I've since decided to axe the HITS Palm Springs 70.3 idea) and I can take some stress/pressure of not training off. It'll be good to relax the body a bit, focus on strength, flexibility and maybe trying to lose some body fat. Who knows. It'll be thoughts to ponder for another post...
Race Details:
New York City, New York
Run: 26.2mi, point to point
Race Summary:
Before I breakdown my race, I wanna touch on something that kind of frustrated me. The logistics for getting to the start line of this race are pretty ridiculous. I joked that I had to take a car, a plane then a train, boat and bus just to walk to the starting line. Obviously, coming from across the country, it's a no brainer that I'd be flying here. But since the bus transportation option from Manhattan was sold out, I had to choose the Staten Island Ferry. And that was ferry terminal was such a mess race morning. So many people packed into that terminal and everyone cramming and pushing to get on the boat. Luckily I got a seat. But you get off the boat and then have to walk thru the food court and stand in another long line just to get on a bus to Fort Wadsworth. All in all, I left the hotel at 7am and didn't even get into the race waiting area until 10:35am. I joked with my bus buddy that it takes a marathon to get to the marathon start line. At least I had enough time to hit the potty and get to my corral before my wave start. Some other folks on the bus were not so lucky...
Those first 3 miles are really as advertised. I mean, we rode the Verrazano Bridge for the Bike Tour in May, but running up that bad boy was a rough way to start. Similar to the SF 2nd Half start, I focused on telling myself to go slow, don't kill your race right here, all the people passing you will get owned by you later. And as the story always goes, I definitely passed a lot of those people later in the race. So success there.
The next stretch of miles through Brooklyn and Queens were comfortable. I made sure not to push it too hard remembering that I wanted to run this race and not hit the wall. I was trying to negative split it to see if that would hurt less (spoiler alert, I'm not sure it did, but I felt better throughout the race). But coming off that first bridge and running through Brooklyn was really awesome because of the crowds. And this would be a theme throughout. The people of NY really lined the streets and cheered on thousands of random strangers. It's pretty amazing and uplighting to feel all that energy!
The next major stretch of note came at mile 15 on the Queensboro Bridge. That was the 2nd stretch of elevation via a bridge. That one actually felt painful. Again, I didn't walk and I'm proud of that, but it was definitely a slow trudge. After you get off that bridge though, it's nice to again have a giant crowd cheering and kinda giving you that mental pick me up to keep going and keep the momentum.
I kept it together for a couple more miles, but mile 19 was where I started walking thru aid stations. I hadn't hit the wall per se, but I knew that the real race was going to start and I felt like I needed a chance to get some energy. The last 10K is always where the battle is going to be both mentally, physically and in terms of finishing time. And it def was a battle. Particularly because the last hill into Central Park was killer. I was so hopeful that I could use my training, my negative splitting and all my will power to push thru the last 10-8K to a sub 4:30 time. That didn't happen. The hill was real and the pain and fatigue was even more real. I was trudging up it at a pace faster than many (likely those who passed me in the first miles), but I couldn't achieve the much faster splits that I wanted.
In what seemed like an eternity, I kept pushing up the hill, along the park and finally thru Central Park to the finish line! It was about 1.5 miles but it felt longer than the entire marathon. It literally felt like an eternity. Fatigue was setting in hard, I wanted to walk, the pains in my feet and knees just kept getting worse and worse. But finally I did it! I crossed the line, I grabbed my medal and tried to shove some pretzels, water and banana into my body as I waddled thru the finisher area. And despite knowing I set a personal worst, I still felt accomplished that I did this bucket list race!
A note about finishing a marathon and the moments after. You feel terrible. You're horribly sore. And then they make you walk forever to get all your post race things and get out to some place where you can get transportation home. It's terrible. They should definitely make it easier so athletes can choose to just get out and go rest somewhere. Or maybe that's why they offer a VIP area... Exit early... for a fee $$$
Oh a quick note about my fueling plan: I had a strategy and it worked! My plan was to eat a Honey Stinger gel about every 35-45 minutes and take the Salt Stick pills every 30 minutes. That plus keeping a heart rate in the 160s helped me avoid the wall! So I was definitely happy about that!
Map and Stats Plot:
Heart Rate Zones:
The chart tells the story that I lived this marathon in Zone 4. In fact, I was pretty much only in Zone 5 for the very end where I tried my hardest to make a push to get under 4:30. That didn't happen... It's interesting that I was probably in Zone 3 for the uphill/downhill part of the Verrazano Bridge which is mile 0-3 of the race. I'd have to guess that was either a mistake or that my HR actually went down as I was going downhill. Very interesting...
Course Reported Finish:
Welp... There goes a personal worst aka the Reverse PR... I'm so awesome right? :(
Run:
Well the Garmin was all kinds of off and haywire, likely due to all the runners trying to ping satellites as well as various trouble areas for signals like the bridges and running between tons of high buildings. Alas, it shows the summary that my HR was high on average and my pace was slow on average. But the one thing it shows is that my actual moving time was 2 minutes faster than my finish. That's because there was a fire in some apartment building at Mile 18. So the race was literally stopped for 2+ minutes so that a fire truck could get to that building. Definitely lost some time and momentum there, but overall didn't change much... I guess it could've helped me avoid setting a new Reverse PR... LOL
Pics:
Obligatory Times Square photo
Zombie Times Square photo after the red eye flight
Various expo photos
Did a little bit of sight seeing on Saturday
Carb loading dinner!
Shots from the morning ferry ride
Therapy dogs right outside the race corrals
This race was packed! 51,000 runners!
Me telling the volunteer how to take a photo with my iPhone turned into hilarious candid
A good, normal photo at the finish line
Totally happy with pizza and beer post race :D
Eating all the donuts the next morning
Hanging with Angela and recapping our races and pain points the next day!
Views from the floor level at the CTF NY office! They're even better higher up!
Like this :D
A Medal Monday shot with the Brooklyn Bridge!
