New PRs, 11 days and couting

Staten Island Half - Rain & Wind

It's less than 2 weeks until my very first marathon. 11 days. And I am injured again. So close. I am still hoping that not running for as long as I can afford it will fix it as much as possible. This time it seems to be my right hip flexor. You see, my right hip has always been cause for trouble - just see many of my previous posts. This is especially annoying because it all went very well the first two thirds of the training program. I was doing great! Then came the Fifth Ave Mile which caused a bit of trouble. especially with the 10K just a couple days later. I recovered rather quickly, though, and kept on training just fine. Then the Bronx 10M happened and while I was doing my miles over the following week I felt my right hip to become more bothersome by the day. It was still ignorable and I just took an extra day or two of rest here and there but kept on training. It all started to go really downhill after the Staten Island Half. I ran my biggest PR ever but I was not able to do any more running for the following week. I popped a few Ibuprofen and just rested, knowing that the biggest challenge was still to come: a group 20M training run which I so not wanted to miss because of all the really long runs I still have to finish one successfully. I ran it. I felt great right after and on the way home. Then it became radically worse to a point that I wasn't able to walk without pain. That's where I let it be and I haven't run for over a week. It is getting better and I am positive that I will get to a point where I can run the marathon I just have to adjust my expectations and be prepared for a lot of pain and quite a bit of PT right after. I am mentally ready and I am convincing myself that I will be physically ready just enough to get through. Just two weeks ago I was confident that I could finish in around 3:16 hours (first marathon and BQ!) but now I am scaling this back to somewhere more around 3:30 or 3:40. I will try something like this: first 10 miles in 8mm, next 10 miles in 7:45mm, and the last 10 kilometers in 7:30mm. Negative splits but still quite conservative. The other strategy I am considering is 10-10-10 which prescribes to run slower than goal pace the first 10 miles (around 8mm), faster than goal pace the next 10 (maybe around 7:30mm), and then doing the utmost best, i.e. trying to keep the current pace, go faster, or whatever your body can manage at this point for the last 10K. I'll let you know in a couple weeks how it actually worked out, what I did exactly, and how soon I limped to the doctor. Running is crazy!

So, what happened since the last posting? I ran the Bronx 10M and kept my pace under 7 minutes per mile (6:51 to be precise). I PR'ed by 2:05 minutes. That was my goal two years ago which I missed. Thanks to the marathon training, though, I was able to pull it off this time! I thought I could repeat something similar for the Staten Island Halfmarathon a few weeks later but thanks to the brutal weather and possibly my hip I ended up finishing it up with a 7:13 miles per minute average pace which still gave me a PR of 6:28 minutes! I am not complaining! You can find the details of those two runs in the sidebar or here for the Bronx 10M and here for the Staten Island Half. There is a funny fact about marathon (or any kind of distance) training: you go through all the long and speed runs and you don't really know what they do until you go and race. If there is one thing that I am taking away from this season of training (besides three PRs) is that you just have to trust your coach. Trust your training. Line up and race and you will be rewarded. This was my first time ever that I feel confident that I am actually prepared to run something longer than 10 miles. No, not run. Race!

So, let's talk NYC Marathon. I got my corral assignment a few days ago. I will be starting in wave 1, corral B, start time is 9:50am. Unfortunately I will start in the green lane which runs on the lower level of the Verrazano Bridge, i.e. goodbye great views. I am scheduled to use the ferry that leaves at 6:45am which means that I will be in the start village at least 2 hours before start time. Here is to some hoping that the weather will be great and we don't have to huddle together for hours just to stay warm and dry. I am planning to bring an old long-sleeve shirt that I can discard and a heat blanket (if I still have one at home; otherwise just a trash bag) to sit on. My phone will probably be my source of entertainment in form of an e-book to read and pictures to take. I keep telling myself that this is just like any other race. This time I just have to be a lot earlier than usual. For the race itself I have an idea about how to pace myself (see above) and I have my strategy for nutrition and hydration all figured out (first gel @ 45 minutes and then every 30 minutes; I will pack 8 pouches). I will probably bring a refillable bottle for water but I may change my mind in the very last second about this and rely on the cups that are provided on the course. I am so bad at running and drinking from those cups but I recently read about the "pinch the cup" trick and I may just try that instead. I am okay with running with any kind of bottle (I am just too lazy and especially too cheap to buy anything special plus I like that bottle my daughter got from one of her school events - maybe it's for luck!) in my hand. Phone goes on my forearm and my Garmin on my wrist. I opted out of baggage transport so I can see for myself if those ponchos at the finish line are indeed as sweet as I read everywhere. I think I am ready. It's just that darn hip!

That was a quick update. More to come in November. Good luck to everybody running the NYC Marathon with me. Keep on running, guys!