I said I was going to recap the NYC Marathon at some point. So it is now or never. The results can be found here. I opted for the Overall Men's results. I'm at the bottom- 95th.
Nutshell: I'm pleased with how I fought through it, and how I ran over the last 8-10 miles when the race got tough. I'm happy to be in the Top 100 Men at NYC; that's something! I'm happy to be under 2:40. In the same breath I am disappointed. I thought 2:33-2:34 was doable. I was likely in the best shape of my life. If not for a poor weather day, I would have had a massive PR.
Pre-Race: Well, a Polar Vortex rolled through that dropped temps to the low 40s during the day and 30s overnight, with winds that whipped through at 20-30mph! Race day the rain had disappeared but the wind was a steady 25 mph head on. Not ideal. Far from.
The Race: I made the amateur mistake of starting about 4-5 rows too far back. The result was being behind a ton of riff-raff at the start on the Verrazano. First mile was 6:30 or so, which was tough work getting blown sideways. As I kept rolling down the hill I was asking people what they wanted to run and the general mood was "shrug"- aka "this wind has thrown my plan out the window." So I settled into a group around 4 and realized I was going too slow. If I wanted to make any sort of attempt at the mid 2:30's I needed to move up.
There's one problem with moving up: wind. When you moved to the front of a group you got stuck taking the brunt of the wind. Over the course of a mile or so, somewhere in Brooklyn, I made the move to hopscotch up a group. It took me a solid 25 blocks to latch on. But my perseverance paid off as this was the group I would stick with into Manhattan. I sat in the back and tried to zone out, just listen to the rhythm and go. Problem with that strategy: everyone in the back was dangling off, so you needed to be ready to skip up to the back of the guys in front as people peeled off.
From 14-20 I struggled. It was. Tough stretch into Manhattan over the Queensborough, and then down the wind tunnel that is 1st avenue. By the time we turned around in the Bronx I was trying to count down miles. At 23 in Central Park I realized I needed to get a move on to make 2:40. I started to count down guys as I upped my tempo. If not for that realization 2:41 was happening, as I had no motivation to keep going.
Bottom line: Fun in retrospect, terrible during. I'm good with NYC for a while.
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