NYC Marathon Preview

Wow - more than a week since my last post! Let's see, hockey (five practices and a game tonight), Halloween, Super-D's birthday party, and a derailed project at work that needed a lot of attention. It's been a pretty busy week.

And the cherry on top? The NYC Marathon is this weekend.

This will be my first time in New York so I'm pretty excited. Unfortunately I won't be able to spend a whole lot of time there - flying in on Saturday and out on Monday. Originally I was going to fly out Sunday but it turned out to be almost $400 dollars cheaper to stay an extra night (even with hotel costs factored in)!

Truthfully the only thing that I'm nervous about is the logistics and stress of getting to the starting line. Knowing where to go to get picked up, when to be there, what to expect. I've heard horror stories of people wetting themselves because they were stuck on buses trying to get to the starting point. Staging 37000+ people on Staten Island is bound to result in a lot of delay as well as a lot of "hurry up and wait". Given my absolute requirement of coffee first thing in the morning I'll have to be pretty careful with my pre-Marathon hydration.

Once I hit the line though I know I'll be good. The buzz. The energy. The anticipation. The work part is done. It's play time!

I'm expecting to finish somewhere around 3:45 and 4 hours depending on how crowded things are and how I'm feeling. Definitely not planning a PR here - my game plan is to have fun and really enjoy the atmosphere. For those who might be keeping track of me my bib number is 11887.

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Workout Summaries

9 mile run - LSD (Sunday)

5 mile run - Tempo (Thursday)

2.5 mile run - Tempo (Friday)

The 9 mile run on Sunday left me surprisingly wrecked. I think this was due to nutrition - I had about 10 minutes to shower, change, and get Super-D to hockey so I didn't get a chance to eat until a couple of hours later. Bad move.

I was very sore on Monday so I pitched Tuesday's planned 5 mile run to recover a bit more. Instead I ended up doing some Yoga on Monday and Tuesday to stretch things out a bit. I decided to pitch all my other workouts (swimming, spinning, circuit, etc.) to not aggravate the situation - no good arriving in New York overtrained and wrecked. Needed to keep my remaining taper runs in order to make sure that my new shoes are broken in for the Marathon.

My Thursday and Friday runs went well, although I still have a little tightness in my glute that causes my back to get a little sore after a while. Couple of extra Ibuprofen pills will be coming along for the ride on Sunday.