Trying to salvage my summer
Week 10, Days 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 of NYC Marathon Training: A 5-mile run, 20 minutes of cycling, strength training, 3.21 mile run, 3 mile race, and 22 miles on Sunday (including the 5th Ave Mile!)
I am now past the halfway point in my 2022 TCS NYC Marathon training, and I’m not exactly thrilled with my progress so far. Real-life work obligations have taken some of my training time away, and my spirits have been meh as well. But I still have a chance to salvage my summer, and my race training, this month.
To that end, I’m happy that for the last eight weeks of marathon training, I will be doing two days a week of New York Road Runners training classes — Turnover Tuesday and Tempo Thursday after work both days. I’m hoping that this will help me improve.
This week (Week 10 of my training!), I also did those classes, but the Tuesday one was a makeup for a Thursday class I had missed.
On this Turnover Tuesday, I ran around Central Park with a very nice NYRR coach named Jim, who had us do the run-walk method — 1 minute of running, and 40 seconds of walking. As slow as I am, while I do take walk breaks, I really don’t do it in a formal way, so this was a new experience for me! I decided after this to set my watch to see if I could schedule walk breaks into my next race, and see how I did with that. (Read on to see how that went!)
Between the warmup, cooldown, and class run, I ended up with exactly 5 miles for the class, so I was pleased with that.
Later that evening, I took a 20-minute Peloton class at home with Denis Morton as the instructor. And for Wednesday, I did strength training. I also went to the New York Botanic Garden to sooth my spirits.
Thursday night was either a terrible or a critical day in my marathon training, depending on how you look at it. I did the last Tempo Thursday of the 8-week summer series I had signed up for. I fell hopelessly behind my group, and was running by myself at the bridal path at Central Park. This was the second week in a row where I was basically running by myself in the class, even though I was running really hard.
And I was thinking to myself — why am I doing this (and paying for this) when I’m not around anybody else? Not to mention that I felt more than a little unsafe there by myself. I ended up getting off the bridal path and on the main running road in the park, and decided that something had to change.
Long story short is that I decided that for the next training series, I am going to try out the NYRR Running Fundamentals class at that same time period instead of Tempo Thursday, so I can be with runners that are (literally) more my speed. Several of the NYRR instructors assured me that this class did not just have people new to running, and that I can always switch back to Tempo Thursday if I don’t like it.
I’m in a weird spot now — I’ve been running for nine years now, so I’m hardly a beginner. But I’m still pretty slow, and the tempo classes cover longer distances in which I can’t really keep up with the group. (Tuesday classes have shorter distances, so I’m not that far behind!)
So we’ll see how this goes for the next eight weeks!
On Friday, I did side-hustle work and then had happy hour drinks and food at Maya (one of my favorite restaurants!) with Squawker Jon.
For Saturday, I did the Staten Island Athletic Club’s 3-mile Fun Run and set my watch where I ran for 2 minutes, and walked for 30 seconds. I finished in 40:15 (a mediocre time for me) but felt pretty refreshed afterwards!
As for Sunday, it was my first day with more than 16 miles in it. I ended up with a total of 22.25 miles!
The NYRR 5th Avenue Mile is one of my favorite races. Pure adrenaline! So even though it is held on a Sunday, on my long run day, and my age group starts at 7:30 a.m. (yikes!) I decided to go ahead and run it. Plus, they have gone back to giving out New Balance shorts as the swag. (I don’t know why more races don’t do that. I literally have received hundreds of race shirts over the years, but this is the only race to give out shorts!)
But, as usual, Staten Island public transportation was slow and screwed up, so I literally had to run up 5th Avenue from Central Park South to try to make the race start on time. I got there at 7:35 a.m. and was literally the last person in my age group to cross the start line. Whew.
After that stressful start, I didn’t have the sub-10 minute race I was hoping for, or even sub-11 minutes. I finished in 11:08, but I still felt pretty exhilarated after finishing!
I also was amazed at how much I worked up a sweat after this! (Check out the pic at the beginning of this column to see what I’m talking about!)
That was just the start of my running day. I still had to get my long run in.
I ended up doing nearly three loops of Central Park, as well as running up and down 5th Avenue several more times (on the sidewalk, though!) to check out other runners doing the race during the day. I even got to see the pro men’s start! (You can see me in this video, standing on the left and checking my watch!) All told, I ended up with 20.24 miles, finishing with the aforementioned 22.25 miles for the day. What a week!
Hi, Lisa,
Wanted to let you know that Gary used walk breaks in a couple of marathons and found them very helpful and thought that overall they helped prevent late-race exhaustion and resulted in an overall faster time than he would have had with running alone. He did the Galloway method, which I think is run nine minutes, walk one minute, repeat. I think he found pre-planned walk breaks less demoralizing than just running for 18-20 miles and feeling compelled to walk awhile due to tiredness or having started too fast.
I enjoy your posts very much and wish you continued success!