I did a metric marathon today (26.2 km/16.3 miles) and tried to do it at around marathon pace as a simulation of the NYC Marathon. Brooks-Hanson’s running team does this so thought it would be a great workout. Our coach, Scott, mapped out the route, which did a great job of simulating the terrain of the actual marathon. I didn’t quite hit my goal marathon pace of 6:45, but considering the hard workout Thursday and coming off another week of close to 50 miles, I’m pretty happy with it!
I was trying to think back to my Boston training to determine if I was ahead of where I was in the spring and realized that I didn’t keep a good log of my mileage. For my own future reference, I’ll try to update this so I can look back next year. Right now I have 8 weeks to go before New York and had my best 20 mile training run ever on the backend of a 50+ mile week. Hoping for another solid week next week capped off by a marathon simulator run of 26.2 kilometers.
Had a great run today - did 17 miles at an average pace of 7:00 per mile running from Prospect Park in Brooklyn, up through Manhattan, and adding on in Central Park.
The Team Championships was on 8/6 and it went really well. I ran 29:37 (5:56 pace) and came in 8th on the team. The Whippets came in 8th overall and 1st in the B division, moving us into 1st place! The team has improved by so much that my time from last year when I was third on the team would have put me in 11th this year.
I’m loving the place the team is in these days - we have tons of people who both push and pull me to PRs and we have a really positive vibe (unlike last year). Let’s hope it continues and we continue to lead the B division. There are some really tough teams and any of the top four could win it (Iron Runners, Van Cortlandt Track Club, and Henwood Hounds).
Catch-up
It’s been forever since I posted, although I’m sure no one has missed my posts. Since the Boston Marathon, I’ve run a bunch of races with varying degrees of success. I probably should have taken more time off to recover since I went through a bout of dead legs in late-May/early-June, but have bounced back since. My recent results are:
- Brooklyn Half Marathon - 1:23:40 - 6:23 pace (not great, but an ok performance, my second best half marathon time)
- Dashing Whippets Track Meet (400 meters) - 59 seconds
- JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge (3.5 miles) - 20:36 - 5:53 pace (felt pretty good for this one, especially since it was really hot/humid)
- Portugal Day Run (5 miles) - 30:08 - 6:01 pace (this one sucked - I hadn’t quite recovered from the Corporate Challenge and ran like crap)
- Run for Central Park (4 miles) - 23:19 - 5:49 pace (felt great! getting back in shape and came off a good week of mileage. This was my 4 mile PR and the Dashing Whippets won the B division and came in 9th overall.)
- Queens Half - Used it as a training run and ran without a chip. I just wanted to run it at marathon pace and ran 1:29:45 or so.
The past few weeks I’ve been averaging close to 50 miles a week and hope to keep it there and peak around 60 to 65 miles as I get ready for the NYC Marathon. My goals for the next few months are:
- Team Championships (5 miles) - just around 29:00
- Percy Sutton 5k - 17:30
- Fifth Avenue Mile - sub-4:50
- Grete’s Gallop or Staten Island Half - a PR (low to mid 1:21)
- NYC Marathon (2:55 to 3:00)
Dashing Whippets Track Meet
Just a reminder to anyone in the NYC area that wants to run a track meet this weekend - my running team is holding a meet this Saturday, 6/4 at 9:00 am. More info is here:
http://trackmeet.dashingwhippets.org
and you can register here:
http://register.dashingwhippets.org
Let me know if you have any questions!
