ING New York City Marathon

mfox · South Orange, New Jersey Joined: 19 Dec 2004 Posts: 367

Anyone else here doing the New York City Marathon?

I start my tapper this week with a day off. I ran a local 5K race Sunday and managed to beat my time from last year by over a minute (20:06). The course is a little hilly with one nice long hill. It was a little windy during some parts of the race too. So, I'm very pleased with my time, but I wonder how much better I might have done if I had not done a 18 mile long run on Friday and a 5 miler on Saturday and instead had done some easier running and been a little better rested.

Now I'm ready for a well deserved two week tapper. I'll be focosuing on decreasing my milage but keeping the intensity of my runs the same. I'll keep two of my three key workouts in tact; 800 meter intervals and 10K pace tempo run) this week (no LONG runs), do an 8 mile "long run" next Saturday (at below marathon pace) and then just one hard workout early next week. And then I'll take the last two days off before the Marathon on Sunday (10/6).

My bib number will be 6056 so I should be able to get close to the starting line (perhaps not much more than a minute or two off of the clock time). But I'll be at the BLUE start (right/south side of the bridge) which is the farthest one back on the bridge which can be psychologically deceiving. It seems like you start begind everyone else. And I think the view crossing the bridge is better on the other side (NYC skyline).

I'll be shooting for a starting pace of 7:55 and if I feel strong at the half way point and the weather is cooperating (no wind or warm spell) I may try to drop that down 5-10 seconds. I sense that I might be able to run better than this but I only need a 3:30 finish time for a BQ and so I don't think I'll push it much more than that. Once I have a BQ I'll work on improving my time at the next marathon. After NYC I'm hoping to do the Knickerbocker 60K in Central Park a few weeks later.