Last year, my approach to running the NYC Half Marathon looked something like this:
- Three weeks out: “I’m running a half marathon, everyone! Let me tell you all about it!”
- Two weeks out: “I’ll run home from work once or twice. That’ll be enough to get me ready!”
- One week out: “Oh shoot, I have not done enough running.”
But last summer, I started running with the Dashing Whippets, which made me wonder if I should follow an actual training plan. At the time, I was knee-deep in a pretty basic Hal Higdon training plan for the 2017 NYC Marathon. Because I’m paranoid about everything, I decided not to switch gears mid-cycle and do what all the other Whippets were doing.
Instead, I targeted the 2018 NYC Half Marathon as an experiment. Could I get faster if I didn’t just force myself to run 8-minute miles every time I stepped outside for a run? Is it possible for a putz like me to run a half marathon in under 1:40? Let’s find out!
Nutrition Plan
LOL
Training for the NYC Half Marathon
Three weeks into my “base building” period, I got injured.
I’m probably not the first person to do this, but I started Googling possible diagnoses. I concluded that I had either torn a calf muscle or broken every bone in my left foot. I was very wrong about all of these things.
Eventually, I talked to a licensed professional. My therapist, Caitlin, put me through a few strength tests to figure out what we were dealing with.
“So, your glute and hip strength is…very poor,” she told me a few minutes later.
Soon after, she said that I had something called Achilles Tendinosis. Apparently, it’s the stage of tendinitis where the inflammation has gone away, but the muscle is still angry. Good to know, I guess!
The bad news was that she didn’t want me running for a couple of weeks. The good news was that she thought it wasn’t that serious and that I could still have a really good half marathon.
Actually Training for the NYC Half Marathon
After a few weeks of PT, Caitlin started green-lighting longer, uh, long runs. And in the middle of February, I was told to do “whatever’s on the plan.” I missed at least a month’s worth of tempo and long runs, so my peak looked something like this:
- Monday: 40ish “easy” minutes
- Tuesday: 4 repeats of 2km at 15K pace
- Wednesday: Rest
- Thursday: Some sort of ladder situation (2 x 1200m, 3 x 800m, 4 x 400m)
- Friday: Rest
- Saturday: 15-mile long run
I also made it a point to include the Queensboro Bridge and Harlem Hill in my long runs. Why would I put myself through that? Check out the elevation chart below.
If anything, I knew that I’d be ready to do some climbing on race day. As Forrest Gump once said, “That’s good. One less thing.”
Race Morning
For some reason, I thought it would take me three hours to get from Queens to Brooklyn. So I hailed a cab at 5 am, which got me to Prospect Park at 5:30—a full 30 minutes before we were allowed into our corrals. I wasn’t the only one there that early, but I still felt very dumb.
For about an hour, I did everything I could to hydrate and stay warm. I even did what all the good runners do and jogged an easy mile before the start. So by the time I met up with Noel in the corrals, I was feeling pretty optimistic.
“I’m shooting for 1:35 today,” Noel said just before the gun went off.
My fitness that morning screamed something much slower than that. But I’m an idiot, so I made the last-second decision to go with him for however long I could hang on.
My 2018 NYC Half Marathon Experience
Noel ended up dropping me after the first mile and a half, finishing a few seconds over 1:39.
I was surprised to find that my shins were on fire this early in the race. My body probably wasn’t as warmed-up as I thought before the race started. It wasn’t the “I’m sore, but totally fine” kind of pain that I’m used to feeling during a half marathon. It was more like, “Oh, this is what it feels like when muscle tears away from a bone in real time!”
At the three-mile mark, I started thinking about dropping out. Caitlin is a really nice therapist and I’ve recommended her to other runners, but I had just been discharged and really didn’t want to go back to physical therapy.
Luckily, whatever I was feeling went away by mile 5, which is also where my Garmin became useless. I tried doing the math in my head to figure out each split, but then I remembered that I’m terrible at math. So as we approached Times Square, I had no idea what pace I was running. I took solace in the fact that nobody seemed to have a working GPS device.
“My watch just told me I ran that last mile in three minutes,” a runner next to me said at the 8-mile sign.
By the time we got into Central Park, my rough estimate was that I’d finish anywhere between 1:44-1:48. Bummer town. My music also stopped working at the 15K mark, so all I wanted to do was drink a milkshake and watch Ugly Delicious on Netflix.
Then, a miracle in the form of the “800m to go” sign appeared. As I approached the finish line, I gave Jess a thumbs up for The Gram and just like that, my morning was over.
The Results
“You’re the Des Linden of average runners,” Joe said to me after the race. “You’re a metronome.”
My official time was 1:42:58. Not quite the 1:40 or better I hoped for before my injury, but I was still very happy with the result, especially on a brand new (and hillier) course.
So, did following an actual training plan for a half marathon make a difference? My previous PR was a tick over 1:45, which might not look like a huge jump on paper. But it’s still an improvement and I still ran a half marathon on Sunday, so I’m rubber and you’re glue, or something like that.
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