Standing next to two people who are faster than me
I bet when you saw that I put up a new race report on Tuesday that the race must have occurred over the weekend. But the joke's on you as this race happened over a month ago. Take that, 24-hour news cycle!
Luckily I have the memory of an elephant in addition to the procrastination ability of a college freshman so here goes...
I guess in some way it makes sense. Central Park’s loop is around six miles long. A half marathon is 13.1 miles long. So why don’t we make these lemmings run twice around the park and call it a long-course race!
Only the problem is that I run parts of the loop pretty much every single day, which causes this race to feel like a long, endless slog. Let me explain.
There are three stages of a half-marathon. The first four miles are fun. You feel strong, your adrenaline is still pumping, and there are all of these people around. You will probably go out too fast and pay for it later, but in the moment, you feel unstoppable. Miles 4-8 are what I would call “paying the bills”. You just go through the miles like it’s your job. It shouldn’t hurt yet, but your breathing starts to be labored.
The last 5.2 miles alternate between wanting to drop out, avoiding cramps, and counting 200 paces in your head (which results in approximately half a mile of distraction), over and over again. One of the usual saving graces is that you don’t know what’s coming up ahead. Every little distraction counts.
Back to the race. Now imagine if you are running 13.1 miles on a treadmill but are forced to just stare at the distance counter through the entire time. You can’t put a towel over the numbers and be pleasantly surprised 2 miles later. You can’t put on a TV show. When you run through Central Park hundreds of times you know where every turn happens, how high every hill is, where the horse dropping tend to pile up. During this race, I had no solace in new terrain or visual distractions. It was just the same route I always run, but more painful.
Luckily I have the memory of an elephant in addition to the procrastination ability of a college freshman so here goes...
I guess in some way it makes sense. Central Park’s loop is around six miles long. A half marathon is 13.1 miles long. So why don’t we make these lemmings run twice around the park and call it a long-course race!
Only the problem is that I run parts of the loop pretty much every single day, which causes this race to feel like a long, endless slog. Let me explain.
There are three stages of a half-marathon. The first four miles are fun. You feel strong, your adrenaline is still pumping, and there are all of these people around. You will probably go out too fast and pay for it later, but in the moment, you feel unstoppable. Miles 4-8 are what I would call “paying the bills”. You just go through the miles like it’s your job. It shouldn’t hurt yet, but your breathing starts to be labored.
The last 5.2 miles alternate between wanting to drop out, avoiding cramps, and counting 200 paces in your head (which results in approximately half a mile of distraction), over and over again. One of the usual saving graces is that you don’t know what’s coming up ahead. Every little distraction counts.
Back to the race. Now imagine if you are running 13.1 miles on a treadmill but are forced to just stare at the distance counter through the entire time. You can’t put a towel over the numbers and be pleasantly surprised 2 miles later. You can’t put on a TV show. When you run through Central Park hundreds of times you know where every turn happens, how high every hill is, where the horse dropping tend to pile up. During this race, I had no solace in new terrain or visual distractions. It was just the same route I always run, but more painful.
So the same pattern held this race. I started way too fast, stabilized, and went to a dark place. Mile 8 started the decline, continued with a slow mile on the downhill, and it started getting worse and worse until I somehow pulled it together in the end. It started with a word from my Harriers teammate suggesting that we catch up to the guy in front of us in the middle of mile 11. Somehow that comment woke up something inside of me (or the caffeinated gel shot finally kicked in) and I managed to speed up significantly in the last two miles, passing an Asian guy from North Brooklyn Runners to be the first Asian across the finish line. Yes, I just went there. Even a water girl noticed and gave me a shout-out about that one.
Finished a little behind my PR, but given the difficulty of the course and my lack of speedwork leading up to the race, I was very satisfied with my performance.
Mile splits:
(5:35, 5:54, 5:47, 5:53, 6:06, 5:46, 5:50, 6:10, 5:56, 6:04, 6:07, 5:38, 6:18)
Finished a little behind my PR, but given the difficulty of the course and my lack of speedwork leading up to the race, I was very satisfied with my performance.
Mile splits:
(5:35, 5:54, 5:47, 5:53, 6:06, 5:46, 5:50, 6:10, 5:56, 6:04, 6:07, 5:38, 6:18)
RSS Feed