2017 NYC Marathon

I'm not done with Coursing yet! Once again, I ran the race, but don't publish my thoughts until well after the fact. I've had this one written for a while, but buried my head in the sand and tried to ignore the results. This is more of an angry rant about what I went wrong in NY. Since I'm now just a week out from my next marathon (2018 Grandma's), it's worthy of publishing the recap in a separate post and bringing things up to speed. Thinking about this race is helping me to recognize what I need to correct before toeing the line again. So here goes...

2017 NYC Marathon

This was a death by a thousand cuts. After having been so fit going into NYC, I so really REALLY expected this thing to go sub-240, like probably no other race before. I was absolutely shocked that I didn't hit my mark. Mentally, I was hanging a lot on that number. NYC is my only major north of 2:40. Looking back, I'm still annoyed and angry, but now it's time to move on.

To be clear, missing a mark by 2 minutes and 30 seconds isn't tragic for most people... unless you're a highly trained and experienced marathoner. 25 deep and 11 sub-240's, I think it's fair to say that I should really question what went wrong here. There wasn't any single issue that resulted in this race blowing up. It was a combo of many things, some being in my control and some out of my control. I may have been fit as fuck, but the errors became too much to overcome on a pisser of a course.

The problems:

1) Indigestion. Days before the race, I started to notice some stomach issues. I didn't think much of it at the time, but the lack of proper digestion for the days leading into the race and on race morning is not good. In hind sight, this shouldn't come as a shocker, as it likely stems from being in the Dominican Republic a week before the race. Anyway, let's just say my digestion was screwed for several days. I didn't have to stop during the race, but I felt full and heavy the entire way.

2) PreRace Fuel. My consumption the day before and morning of the race was a bit overkill. Strangely enough, I actually started getting gag reflexes and nearly puked somewhere around mile 23.5 or 24. Seriously. I nearly puked. I don't know if it's related to #1 above, but again, I felt full and heavy the entire race. It was a huge effort up until 24, and maybe 2:40 was still in the cards. Needless to say after that point, I knew it was done. My stomach wasn't going to allow it, and my muscles were breaking down.

So what did I eat? Actually nothing out of the ordinary. Typical sandwich, pasta, I believe some pizza. Not bad things before a marathon. However, I did likely over eat at dinner before, and I also ate a fair amount in the morning. One other thing that coudld've hurt was that I drank two bottles of Pedialyte over the evening before and morning of the the race. This was out of the ordinary for me. I should've probably just stuck to Gatorade. Why?? Logic being, I had to wake up a ridiculously early hour to take the ferry over, and I was concerned that I'd be in hyper-digestion mode. When you wake up 5 hours before the start of a race, you undoubtedly need fuel. I didn't want to go the starting line being hungry. Apparently this was too much though.

Somehow #1 and #2 above had me feeling like crap from an input/output stand point. 48 after the race, and I was still dealing with nausea and stomach issues.

3) My Shoes. This sucked. My old faithful, Mizuno Wave Universe has been discontinued and I didn't have a fresh pair before the marathon. They're light as a feather, and super slim. Tried and true for me, and I've run all of my fastest marathons in them. Since they're seriously endangered, I had to go with a backup. Unfortunately, because the running world has been gorging on Hoka's so much in the last few years, I don't have many other minimalist uber sexy racing slippers to choose from. I went with the Nike Zoom LT Streaks. I had been using for some tempo runs and a half marathon over the last couple years, never big boy runs. No 20+ miler in them.

This wound up a bad choice, because the shoe has a odd curvature under the forefoot, and the rubber is very hard. There's just something about how the foot flexes or splays when landing. Regardless, I did test them out in the Naperville Half Marathon, so I thought they'd be OK. They didn't feel fantastic in that race, but I thought good enough.

Immediately after crossing the finish line in Central Park, my feet and legs felt absolutely trashed. I don't think I've ever experienced that particular feeling before. The soreness has always been higher up. I seriously didn't want to walk on my feet after the race. They were killing me until I got out of those shoes. NEVER AGAIN, NIKE!

4) The ground surface: From a weather perspective, temps weren't terrible... 50ish degrees, and wind could've been worse. But there was a constant mist and drizzle that created slick conditions. The course was often very wet, especially for the last 10 miles. Add this to the stiff and unforgiving rubber on my Nike Zoom LT Streaks, and the shoes became terrible in the rain. Double whammy to my lower legs.

5) Along those lines, my hamstring also nearly blew up in the 26th mile. I had been dragging around a balled up hamstring ever since my 2017 Boston Marathon training. It's been irritating, but generally manageable. I was able to train all the way to NYC without any major issues. I even had a fantastic massage a few days before this race, and it appeared to let go somewhat. Needless to say, in the final mile, that thing bit me like a rabid dog. It cramped up two different times on Central Park South. It was so bad for a couple my strides that I nearly stopped. I immediately had to pull back all effort and just slowly try to get it to calm down so I could finish. No doubt, this taxed me 15-30 seconds.

When a bust occurs in a marathon, it gets ugly. And ugly it did get. So up until Central Park, I was hanging. I wasn't happy, but I was still in the hunt for 2:40. Then all of the above became my dream crusher. 24 through the finish went 6:43, 6:38, 6:51, and a 6:33 effort in the final kick. That's a far cry from the 6:00-6:05s, which in theory were supposed to be conservative for me. I was running steady and solid. 23 was 6:14 on 5th Ave's incline, and to be expected.

If I assume that I was in the best shape of my life (which was very arguable given my monster training), and I was able to merely hang onto the 6:15's (which seem pathetic), that would have shed 1:35 seconds off my clock. If I went 6:00, I was at 2:40.

So given some self-inflicted wounds and NY's difficult and hilly course, I can accept the error in my ways. But what I can't accept is the mother of all evils... #6.

6) The Start: And this really got into my kitchen, and fucked with my head for a long time during and after the race. Forget the whole idea that you need to wake up at like 3:30am for this dumb marathon, and that it takes over 2 hours to get from lower Manhattan to the staging area in Staten Island. Forget that cluster fuck, which is worse than Disney World in high season. Forget that it's probably the most expensive marathon in the world, and that Manhattan's hotels gouge your eyeballs out. All that's just part of the circus.

What I did not expect was the shit show in front of me at the starting line and the first two miles, while having a sub-elite bib.

Somehow, given all the damn waves and different starting locations, NY Road Runners still can't figure out how to start that race... and it gets worse every year!!! I STILL HAD OVER 1,000 RUNNERS IN FRONT OF ME AT THE STARTING LINE!! This might not seem like a big deal in a 50K person race, but when you have a sub-elite bib, you're pissed. There should've been 100-200 people in front of me. Again, 3 different starting lines!! Multiple waves. WTF?? And the icing on the cake: When I saw a sea of selfie sticks pop up with 30 seconds to go before the famous cannon, I wanted to cry. Alvaro, Jason Mahakian and I all looked around in awe... half the people were wearing costumes and some even jorts. Somehow we screwed up by being behind them. Or somehow, those assholes wound up cheating their way into a location that they had no business being in. (this is more likely).

Needless to say, I was walking the first 100+ feet of the race. Not running. WALKING. I then started to jog... slowly. I then started to run, and then probably started to sprint around people while jockeying for position. My split shows 7:00 in the first mile. I was originally thinking 6:15-20, but at a very easy effort!! This was work to get that 7:00. No doubt I was going a much faster pace to make up for the lost time... because walking 100 feet takes a long time!!

Mile two was again bad, but better. In an even effort, that mile should've been around 5:30 pace going down the VZ bridge. Instead I was 6:05 and riding the brakes. The congestion didn't clear up until mile three.

This ate away at me. I knew I was robbed, and that I'd have to over run myself to make up for that lost time. When I hit the half, the clock was north of 1:21, yet I was running nearly 6:00 pace. My split was 1:20, but when you back out 1:30-2:00 of damage in the first 2-3 miles, I was running about 1:18:30 effort in the first half. Faster than I was supposed to, in order to "lay up" a 2:40.

The damage was done long before my self-inflicted wounds took over in Central Park.

The NYC Marathon should be fucking ashamed of itself for organizing these starting corrals. They're a world marathon major, for Christ's sake! They go through a lot of effort to segregate the run groups in the staging areas, but completely fuck it up at one of the most important parts of the race... the START! Any other major clearly keeps the tourists separated from the real runners, all the way through the starting line. This. This is why I probably could give a shit less about ever running the NYC Marathon again. I'd rather be mugged.

So there's a right way to run a marathon and there's a wrong way. Generally, you can tell when former happens because you've negative split it. Another sign is how you feel at the finish line. Once I crossed the line, and had to walk through central park to retrieve my gear, I knew I was in trouble.

This wound up being hands down one of the most difficult races I've ever encountered, regardless of how fit it was. I'm still shocked that I didn't go sub-2:40 here, when I thought it was a total gimme. Why does that matter?? Because this continues to stand as my nemesis. My only major >2:40 for me. And it may as well stay that way.

Split Recap:

1- 7:00.2 - Vz Brdige and fucked start, includes walking!!!

2- 6:05.3 - Still fucked, slow effort should've had 5:45 or better

3- 6:06.3 - Still slowish, but things finally calmed down

4- 6:03.7

5- 6:03.2

6- 6:02.4

7- 6:00.5

8- 6:01.0

9- 6:06.3

10- 6:00.6

11- 6:04.6

12- 5:58.2

13- 06:06.6 - Pulaski Bridge, shocked the clock was 1:21+ at half!

14- 5:58.9

15- 6:13.8 - Queensboro Bridge / hill

16- 6:15.5 - Queensboro Bridge / hill

17- 6:04.7 - 1st Ave / headwind

18- 5:58.5 - 1st Ave / headwind

19- 5:58.6 - 1st Ave / headwind

20- 6:10.4 - Willis Bridge / major headwind

21- 6:09.3 - Madison Ave Bridge / hill

22- 6:07.3 - Still felt strong here

23- 6:14.4 - 5th Ave hill starts taking a toll

24- 6:43.8 - 5th Ave Dream Crusher comes, I nearly puke

25- 6:38.5 - Central Park just get to the damn finish, feet hurt

26- 6:51.7 - Hamstring balls up, nearly stop altogether

.2- 1:26.0 (6:33 pace) - Literally hobble across

Out in 1:20:19, back in 1:22:11 = 2:42:30