I Accidentally Signed Up for NYC

I’ve made a huge mistake. ~ Gob Bluth

You read that right. Back in May, I decided, with about 17 minutes to spare, to sign up for NYC. Given last year’s shenanigans, I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in. But low and behold, less than 12 hours later, I got the nod. I guess I’m running NYC this year.

So I have been training, ramping up my miles, trying to get some consistency in the books. June and July featured some decent weeks, but very little consistency of volume. The last couple of weeks in July started to show some promise and I have managed to follow up a 48 last week with another 48 this week (and I might just have to go out for a double today given that this morning’s run went well and was pretty mellow). But I’ll take the 48 regardless and consider it a good kick-start to the next 12 weeks of more focused efforts.

This week’s training featured some highs and a couple of lows:

• Monday: 3.8 in 40 on trails. Overall not a great run. Ran in my NB MT10s and though this one started out okay, my legs went a bit dead about half way through.
• Tuesday: 7.05 in 1 hour hill play. Headed up to North Boulder Park and after a couple miles of warm up, did some hill repeats. I would consider this particular effort to be in the 6 range on a 1-10 scale. Didn’t feel great but got them done.
• Thursday: 8.05 in 1:16 on trails. After missing my Wednesday window due to work constraints, I shifted things to Thursday. This was actually a pretty decent effort sans-watch with some good sized hills so I was pretty pleased with this one.
• Friday: 3.95 in 45 on trails. This… was not a good run for me. Intended to throw in a Tabata but after a couple reps really, REALLY wasn’t feeling it. So I walk/jogged back home. Ugly. Guessing I was dehydrated or something.
• Saturday: 9.58 in 1:12 Tolland Road 10K. Tempo efforts at altitude are always tough to judge. On one hand, I knocked this out. On the other, it wasn’t a particularly strong effort if you look at the numbers. But I’ll take it. The item that made this workout AWESOME is that, after living up in the mountains 2-days -shy of 20 years, I finally saw my first mountain lion. Really super cool.
• Sunday: 14.89 in 2:15ish on trails. Fairly mellow 8 miles then tossed in some quicker tempo efforts in the last 6. Overall, felt great on this one. Ran with Mark Plaatjes’ crew, which was a lot of fun.

So with 12 weeks to go before NYC, I am still playing things by ear and am planning to let the training dictate my strategy for the race. I would say that I am pretty much on target at this point when compared to where I was last year prior to Eugene. I’d benefit from a few more road miles but am not willing, just yet, to completely abandon trails so we’ll see how I can work in mileage increases in the coming weeks on the slab.

This week was a bit nuts when it came to juggling work and running as well. Lessons learned include: Don’t get too uptight if things don’t go completely to plan; Be sure to get in your long run; Don’t force it if you aren’t feeling well but give yourself time to settle in. On two occasions this week I had less-than-stellar runs. I didn’t let it bother me and just moved on to the next workout without investing too much time in worrying about the previous day’s performance. You are going to have bad days. Don’t get too caught up with these.



On a final note, I am really looking forward to tuning into the IAAF World Championships starting next week. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Mark Plaatjes’ marathon win. I am guessing the U.S. men don’t have much of a hope this year but perhaps one of the women can uncork a good race. Here’s a link to the schedule.