Sweet 16

Today's inaugural NYC half marathon was limited to the first 10,000 runners who signed up. When I went to pick up my race packet Saturday, I found I was not listed as a participant. Oh Oh! After some checking and waiting and discussing how I had signed up thru Team for Kids, I was given a number. Today I proudly wore entry number 12,805. Hey I may have gotten the last number...okay, kinda cool.

I arrived in Central Park at 5:30 am, and was pretty surprised to see thousands of runners already there. It was still pitch black! Our Team for Kids group met in Central Park at 6 am, stretched and then in our separate pace groups, ran 3miles, ending at the starting line of the race. This is where my number came in handy, because at this point, just about all of the 12,804 runners were ahead of me.

Once the race started it took our 8:30 pace group about 8 minutes to get to the official starting line and we slowly moved forward. The first 3 or 4 miles were spent mostly dodging other runners and trying to move ahead of them. No real pace can be set in this situation, you just do the best you can. The course was one loop around Central Park, then south on 8th Avenue. We finally found open running space as we exited Central Park, and just then the skies opened up and the rain poured down.

We were suddenly soaking wet, shoes a bit heavier and now dodging large puddles as well as other runners. Before we knew it we were in Times Square, and our pictures were being broadcast on the large NASDAQ screen overhead. At 42nd Street we turned right and headed to the west side highway. At this point we had run about 8 miles. I found myself tiring a bit and tried some of the Zen words and some Gatorade, and onward we went. Before we knew it we were on the Westside highway, a straight flat road 4 miles to the finish. Now it was just a mental game, counting down to the end, 40 blocks to go, 3 miles to go, 2 miles to go. One of our group members said, he was going to push the pace to the finish. We all increased our speed the final two miles and finished in 1 hour 47 minutes, for an average pace of 8:10 per mile.

Our target today was to run 15 minutes at 8:30 per mile, then run 5 minutes at 8:00 per mile. This was not going to happen based on the number of people, so we thought we'd try to run 2 miles at pace, the one mile faster, then repeat until finished. We were told not to worry about racing this event, that this was a training run, learning how to run in big groups and how to pace in a longer race. I think we met our goals today. At the end, I was tired, but not completely spent. Could I have tacked on another 10 miles today to complete a marathon? Well, maybe, but not comfortably. Good thing there are 8 weeks left to get prepared!

Here is a video from today's race from the NYRRC.

If you think you'd like to try a half marathon, try to get into NYC next year. It was a nice course and lots of fun.

Happy trails....