My Very First Marathon 26.20 Mil

What and amazing experience. Everything that could have gone wrong went right, but you can't never plan for the unexpected. Lets start from the beginning..

We got up on time 4:30am. Yup that was early. I took a quick shower and got ready. We got to the finish line around 6:30am or so. I didn't realized that I had not eaten anything before leaving the house and there was absolutely anything around at that time. I remember my last 20 mile run; I began to feel dizzy after mile 18 after beginning to feel really hungry. To be honest, I was a bit worry that would happen again today. We found a coffee truck but, they guy only had muffins. Not the good muffins but those you find in packages full of preservatives and tons of grease. I figured I would do more damage by eating that than help myself. I skipped the muffin and we kept walking towards the starting line. Sadly, there were no signs anywhere about which way to go to the start line and the park's security had no clue either. We found a couple of runners coming back from it and gave us directions.

When we got to the starting line, there was very few people and the organizers were still getting ready. There was music playing and every one had a great attitude. My dad, Joyce and I decided to place ourselves under the 9+/mile pace section. Minutes before the gun, a US soldier in suit and gear placed himself a few feet away from us. He was doing the half and was doing it for a charity.. God Bless him.
Gun went off and we began our 3 minute walk to the actual start line. By then, my dad had already disappeared in the crowd, Joyce and I ran together for about 3-5 minutes. Once I got some sort of breathing room and began my pace increase and never saw Joyce 'till the end of my run.

Warming Up For The Big Day 3.21 Mil (28:19 min)

This is the first run since Sunday's 7 miler. I have been resting the legs to make sure my ankle will get plenty of rest and feel good on the big day. I was planning to do this run while I waited for Joyce to pick me up, but strong winds kept me indoors. I did my run at home on the treadmill before Jocelyn went to bed. Jocelyn asked to run first. LOL she looked so cute running. Saturday is her debut :-) I hope get tons of pictures and videos.

I took advantage of the iFit feature on the treadmill and set it up to do a short mapped run around the neighborhood. The run was a bit short of 3 miles but had some small hills. I added the difference to make 3.21 miles. I kept my pace a 8:57 minutes per mile to see how the ankle and foot would feel. After 2 miles I moved up to 8:48 min for mile till the end of the run. My ankle felt ok, I was able to keep the pace with no problem.

Not much to say about this run but "it felt good" No run tomorrow but Saturday another 3-4 miles. But I may do this tomorrow instead to have Saturday as a rest day. I guess I will play it by ear.

Last Long Run Before Marathon

I planned for a 10 mile run today, but didn't work out the way I wanted. I started at home because it was raining. I wanted to try the new shoes, and the treadmill seamed like a good idea. I tried the new pouch for the Nike+ sensor as well. I started out with my regular pace and was feeling great, the shoes felt great as well. I decided to check the Nike band after mile 1and noticed that the band was showing only .56 out of the whole mile. I stopped to checked it. I ended the workout on the band and restarted again and kept going.. Mile two came up and the band only picked up .17 out of the 2nd mile. I re-linked the band and the sensor and the band and seemed to fixed the problem. As I got close to mile 3, Jocelyn began to complain that it was getting cold in the house. I was getting really hot and they were getting cold.

I felt bad that they were cold and decided to hit the street. It seemed like the rain had stopped, but it looked cold. So I put on a set warmer and dryer clothes. Yes, I took the new shoes with me.. lol. I ran to the park and was tempted to keep going towards the bridge to make it a 6 mile run, but noticed too many branches and some flooding on the path, so I headed back after mile 2 to make it a 4 mile run on top of the 3 miles I already had on the treadmill.

I started mile 4 a bit too fast without noticing it. I was a bit shocked to see that I pulled a mile under 8 minutes after 3 miles. So, I slowed down, the goal today was not to get a new PR but to just run and try not to injure myself eve more. When I looked out of he window before heading out, it looked like it was not raining at all, but once out there, I got wet. lol I didn't get that tightness on my calf or pain on my shin so I was a very happy camper :-)

The splits are as follow.. Please not that the first 3 miles are estimates, since I could not use my Garmin and they are bases on the time it took me to complete them.

Mile 1: 9.33
Mile 2: 9:33
Mile 3: 9:33
Mile 4: 7:38
Mile 5: 9:35
Mile 6: 9:20
Mile 7: 10:20

Run Home From Work 7.09 Mil (1:11:52 Hrs)

Ok, so the run did not go as I planned. I originally wanted to land with an over all pace of 9+ min per mile. My first mile was ok, easy and smooth 'till towards the end of mile 1. My right calf began to act up again. Keep in mind, my ankle was not bothering at all. I started to pick up my feet a bit higher and it helped for a bit, but he tightness was still there. I knew Mile 2 was going to be a slow one. There was a reason why. Half way on mile 2 there is a hill that leads to the end of Shore Road, and to a down hill through a 40 mph traffic which drivers usually do an easy 50-60 mph (hey, I am one of them, lol) the down hill is about .20-.30 before you are able to cut through the fence and into the path. There is a safer none thrilling way to do this, but you'll have run over a mile to get to the path. So the thrill here is to take advantage of the red light that is about 2 blocks away giving you some breathing room. What I do is, walk the hill giving the traffic light time to stop traffic. Once that is done, is "like a bat out of hell time" run down that hill as fast as you can before traffic catches up to you.. Today it didn't work out for me that way. I didn't count with traffic coming from Pelhamdale ave making a right at the traffic light.. so I had some cars going in my direction and some driver screaming.. "get out of the F$@#! road, you A-Hole" So while trying to run without tripping over all the fallen branches on the road, I was able to flick my middle finger. Got to the path and I had to take a walk since immediately after that you get hit with another small hill. I walked it and resumed running at the top of the hill till mile 3.

For the first time in my year of running, I had the urge to use the bathroom for #1. Usually I am able to hold it no matter what, but today for some reason I couldn't I got as far as mile 4 before making the decision to stop and use the bushes.. As I was done a pack of walker ladies went by towards New Rochelle. To make things a lot more uncomfortable, I was devoured by mosquitos in a matter of seconds. After mile 5 I saw Joyce drive by towards my parents, so I stated to wave like crazy, but she did not noticed me.

After Work Run To Glen Island 4.31 mil (39:52 min)

I can describe this run in one single word. "AWESOME" Compared to all last week and Monday's run including my 5k at JFK, today was just great.. My pace could have been a lot better if I didn't have to take 2-3 quick walk due to dogs in the park. Oh and one cold stop due to my right calf getting extremely tight... (not sure why it's doing it) this is the the 3 run that I had that problem but today was something small. Nevertheless, this run is just what I needed to remind me that there is till some force in this old fart. LOL

Today I changed the last half of mile 3. Instead of running on old hilly slanted road, I made a right on Shore Road and went left on the next street. I forgot the name. LOL, you still get the same freaking hill but on a much nicer, smoother road. I actually think that the hill is a bit longer than the original but at least I didn't have to deal with the slanted road.

I was able to pull a pace of 7+ at some points specially towards the end of the run.. My ankle did very little complaining today and it was only towards the beginning of the run, after that, I guess it got tired of whining and shut the hell up. I guess it paid off to go to sleep fairly early last night, because even though the run was at the end of a hectic day, I felt pretty fresh.

Tomorrow I will attempt to go run home which will give me a 6-7 mile run. Not planning to rush it or go too fast. just cruise and enjoy and get there in one piece.. I don't want to drag it either, but I want to land in the 9+min pace if possible.