new york road runners has a program for people to qualify for the nyc marathon and get guaranteed entry in the race (since the marathon is a lottery). you have to become a member of nyrr by the end of january of a single year, run nine qualifying nyrr races, volunteer at one race, and maintain your membership the following year to get guaranteed entry in the following year. so, in 2009, i'm running 9 races, and volunteering 1 race to get guaranteed entry in the marathon in 2010.
in the morning, i got ready as usual. my morning race routine (for a race starting at 9 am):
- wake up 7:15 a.m.
- bathroom, brush teeth, wash face (7:15- 7:25)
- feed cat (if haven't the night before) (7:25-7:30)
- put on a pot of coffee, if i'm making it (7:30 - 7:35)
- get dressed (7:35- 7:40)
- put on race chip and pin on race number (7:40 - 7:45)
- put on sun screen (7:45-7:50)
- eat breakfast (7:50 - 8:00)
i usually leave myself a few extra minutes for anything else i may need to do- bathroom, grab a hat or extra shirt, re-tie my shoes, etc.
then i head out the door around a half hour before i'm supposed to meet my friend. it takes about a half hour, door to door, to get from my apartment, to the subway, to our meeting spot.
if the race is at 9, we meet between 8:30 and 8:40 depending where the start is, so i leave between 8 and 8:10.
saturday's race day began as usual, but it was definitely a doozy!
this week it was tough to motivate myself to work out, and it definitely continued through the weekend. i guess you could say maybe i was feeling lazy, or maybe just tired, but whatever the case, i wasn't pumped and raring to go for this race like i was last weekend.
maybe it had something to do with the weather (overcast). but i did think the rain was supposed to hold off until later in the day. that is, until we crossed the starting line, and it started pouring! we rain the first 3 miles in a heavy rain, which luckily tapered off and stopped for the second half of the race.
the direction of the course was killer- a clockwise loop around the park, starting at 62nd street on the west side, ending around 74th on the west side. once we hit the 110th street hills, i felt like the hills just kept coming!
this race was supposed to be part of a long training run, but somehow my friend and i ended up running at more of a race pace. sure, if i was actually racing i could have gone faster, but i felt like with the rain and the hills and the fact that this was a training run, i was going way too fast altogether!
i finished in about 52:46, at an average pace of 8:30 minutes/mile. great time, but too fast for long training run, which you're technically supposed to run 3 minutes per mile slower than race pace. not that i always run them that slow...
so, needless to say i was exhausted after the race, and the 5 miles we had to do after that were totally killer. not to mention i was still soaked :( we did stop to get water and a snack- i had half of a cinnamon swirl bagel and two bites of an apple - and for a bathroom break. that definitely helped, but it also made it really hard to start up again!
we stuck it out though. the hills were even HARDER the second time around, and were VERY happy to finish! i took the longest hot shower when i got home and then took a nap!
it was rough, but today is a rest day and boy am i glad!
happy sunday :)
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