Once upon a time, “I ♡ NY” was true for me. That is no longer the case — the traffic, glut of people, partisanism, and weather are just some of the myriad factors that make me wish I could just get the hell out.
But on this day, I loved it. (Or at least, for some of this day.)
I was never supposed to actually attempt to race this: the plan was to PR in Boston. But I didn’t, and so I was somewhat glad to have another shot at it. Especially since, even though I seem to be alone in this, I find NYC to be a less difficult course than Boston.
Of course, it’s nice that I don’t need to sell a limb to have a bed to sleep in the night prior to the race! Just half a limb to pay for the race itself, and assorted sundries. But I didn’t even get to spend that much time in that bed, because I had to get up stupid early to sit in the cold on Staten Island for several hours. It wasn’t really that bad: it was sunny, and not super windy, so that helped. But I am a big baby about the cold. And finding out, several weeks before the race, that I apparently qualified for the local competitive corral, which would mean access to a pre-race tent, but then not actually having access to said tent due to a miscommunication that had nothing to do with me… well, it just felt like a cruel joke. There are only so many layers one can wear before it’s ridiculous, and I was at that point. And still cold.
It must have affected my brain, because for some reason, I thought it was 8:30 when it was only 7:30, and I took my pre-race caffeinated Sport beans an hour early. This is off to a great start, I see!
And then eventually it was time to head into the corrals (for real), and that’s when a real case of impostor syndrome set in. I have no business being here with all these people who actually know what the hell they’re doing… and, coincidentally, in the same corral as the sole 3:05 pacer. But I was there, by some fluke or other… with the goal of attempting to do something I have no business doing.
I was assigned to the lower level of the Verrazzano Bridge this year. Which was a little sad, because the difference in elevation is negligible, and I’d miss some people along Fourth Avenue. Oh well. The bridge can be windy, so I kept a zip-up hoodie on when I started, intending to take it off once we got to Brooklyn, but I wound up doing that midway across the span instead… and pausing my watch in the process. Fabulous. I noticed right away, so it was only a couple of seconds, but still. The auspicious start continues!
The weather was pretty great for running. Personally, I’d have been more than okay if it were five or ten degrees warmer, but it’s definitely hard to complain about these conditions.
I did have a pace band that I was intending to follow to the letter, but it’s hard to do that when GPS is not behaving. I’m accustomed to having to run a bit faster than what the pace band says in order to have my actual elapsed time match up with it when I reach the course mile markers, but the watch was measuring short, so I was essentially running faster than I was supposed to. Which felt fine, in the moment, but I kept telling myself I ought to slow down because I’d pay for it later. I didn’t need more to worry about, given how my stomach was starting to pull shenanigans starting at mile five. Thankfully, while it didn’t ever completely settle down, it was only sporadically truly terrible… and I struggled to get in three gels, because I was so terrified of making it worse. I did try to take as much Gatorade as I could, figuring liquids would be easier, but honestly, that didn’t feel great either. (Also makes me wonder whether I’m gaslighting myself, because if I said a tiny part of me wasn’t a little gleeful at the skipped calories, I’d be lying.)
Brooklyn is indisputably the best part of the race. It’s early enough that you aren’t too brain-dead to take in the surroundings, and the spectators there are the best. I mean, I may be slightly biased in that regard, but still. I also repeated what I did in 2016, and threw my gloves at the PPTC cheer station (same gloves!) and bopped Oren on the head, and he gave them back to me later, so I can do it a third time with the same gloves if I want to!
Much like in Boston, instead of ticking down miles, I was looking for people whom I knew would be somewhere along the route. It makes the time go by faster, it seems. But it’s so hard to remember who will be on the left and who will be on the right! I was almost sure Andy had said left around mile 12, but a tiny part of me thought maybe I was wrong, so I stuck to the middle… and he was on the right. I’m holding a gel because there seemed to be fewer water stations than normal, which meant it sometimes took me two miles to make it through one.
Somewhere along the way, my GPS made a huge leap and caught up with reality, and then surpassed it … so that when I reached the halfway point on the Pulaski Bridge, almost exactly on pace for my overall target, my watch measured 13.17. That’s more familiar territory for me, really; measuring behind was weird.
I almost had a heart attack at the QDR cheer station near mile 14, because Kevin ran up from behind me and they all went crazy with cowbells and air horns and confetti and who knows what else… it’s not like it was quiet before that, but this sudden explosion was a bit unexpected and terrifying!
Then came the Queensboro Bridge. I didn’t find it that terrible in 2016 (despite having a mild panic attack because it’s where Michael and I got separated and I’d have to run the rest of the race alone), but there were many more people running it that year, so it wasn’t quite as empty. It just seemed to go on forever and ever and ever… and that is when my GPS went completely insane. I mean, yes, we’re climbing up onto a bridge, so I would expect to slow down a bit… but the 10:30 average lap pace did not seem at all accurate. Not to mention, the odds of everyone around me dropping off to the same degree that I did at the exact same time seem very low. As was proven to be the case, because I was behind the next mile marker.
Heading down the ramp off the Queensboro Bridge is somewhat reminiscent of Boston in that the spectators along First Avenue are audible before they’re visible, kind of like Wellesley. Only slightly less loud. And now I was in familiar territory, because I literally just ran these ten miles the Sunday before, right?
Except that I expected my GPS to sort itself out once I made it off the bridge, and it never did. I had the pace band, so I could see my elapsed time at every mile marker and compare it to where I needed to be in order to hit my goal, but the average lap pace was hopping around all over the place, and I couldn’t rely on it at all. I evidently am terrible at running by feel, and it was kind of obvious that I wasn’t going to run 3:05, so I tried to work out the math that would at least get me to a PR. Which was hard to do, so I just resorted to thinking in 7:30s; it’s relatively easy to do that. Unless you’re me, and you’re thinking in terms of twenty city blocks equaling a mile, but you forget about the little sojourn up into the Bronx, and then you get so confused that you don’t even know anymore if you’re in the Bronx or in Harlem.
But finally I did figure it out, and by then I was on the Fifth Avenue stretch. My watch was still measuring behind — nearly half a mile behind. That meant that I needed to do even more math to know what I would need to do to PR, and the 7:30s seemed like they’d get the job done. I would fall short of 3:05, of course, but I should have been solidly in the mid-3:07 range.
Mile 25 was by far the most agonizing one of the race. I’m lucky that my knees were fairly cooperative until the last four or five miles, but by that point, they were not being cooperative at all, and downhills paired with angry ITBs… not a great situation. It was a huge relief to get out of the park onto Central Park South. And then there was the “800m to go” sign, and I suppose my calculations were off somewhere, because I thought I had plenty of time to finish under 3:08… but then I passed the “400m to go” sign, and suddenly it was way closer than I expected, and then I passed the “200m to go” sign, and it was all but impossible. Though I tried to give it a decent effort, I still fell short. Too bad I didn’t start kicking for it earlier, since apparently I had the energy reserves for it.
My watch wound up measuring 25.95 miles, which means that .15 mile appeared from somewhere in the last 800m. Lovely. My Garmin also does not know that I ran a marathon PR, since according to GPS, I didn’t run 26.2 miles. (You can also tell from the splits when GPS failed me… I didn’t slow down because I felt like I had no choice. I slowed down because I had no idea what was happening; I have to work on my feedback perception.)
Garmin recorded 25.95 miles in 3:08:10, 7:15/mi. (Adjusted to 26.2 miles after the fact so that I could assign myself a PR in Garmin Connect.)
Officially, 26.2 miles in 3:08:09, 7:11/mi. 975/24947 OA, 127/11350 F, and 27/1603 F35-39. It’s not exactly what I was going for, but it is a 78-second PR and a course PR by over 21 minutes, and so I can’t be too upset with it. And look at that, I only positive split by three and a half minutes this time!
I suppose I can skip the McMillan prediction game, since even though I did run a PR, I didn’t run faster than I was predicted to after the Bronx 10M. (But hey, I apparently did run a 30K PR…)
Now I just need to manage to turn that 40K time into my marathon time. Which would require a Goldilocks course. No steep uphills, and especially no steep downhills. Gentle rollers should do it. My, how I’ve changed between marathon number one and marathon number ten… from “never, ever again!” to “when’s the next one?” I was a little wary of running another marathon after having such an enjoyable experience at Boston, because I thought nothing could ever compare to that, but this race delivered. I never even had any “I am so over running for right now” moments! Of course, the first half was far more enjoyable than the second, but that’s pretty normal, I suppose.
The medal is gorgeous. And, happily, my hand is not on my hip because it hurts (it didn’t, yay!), it’s so that my marathon-themed nails are visible. Gold accents for the fiftieth anniversary!
Running Break 
Great report, Leiba, and even greater race. Congratulations! If you want to drop your time a bit, may I suggest either Steamtown or California International Marathon in the future. Keep rocking it!
Both on the radar!
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