Let's Get it Started

New York City Marathon Training: Week 1. Here we go. 

The ING New York City Marathon will be my 5th marathon and my 4th marathon training cycle. (You can read about that time I accidentally ran a marathon here). Since I've started marathon running and blogging, I've taken 1 day a week to discuss my training and get advice from other runners out there. This time around,  it will be Tuesdays. If you're a runner, tune in every Tuesday for my training updates...if not, feel free to skip my Tuesday posts for the next 4 months!

It's taken me just shy of 2 years to get to this point. I signed up as a member of the New York Road Runners in November 2010 and started working my way toward guaranteed entry for the NYC Marathon through NYRR's 9+1 program in 2011. I ran my 9 races, volunteered for 1 and dropped the $216 to officially register.

When I saw that NYRR had raised the registration fee from $156 to $216 over the course of one year, I was pissed and to this date, one of my most popular posts is my rant about just how much it actually costs to run the NYC Marathon. 

I don't keep it a secret on this blog that I really don't like New York. I've hated the small apartments, the over-crowded streets, the I'm-the-only-person-in-this-city attitude, etc. All of these things got me thinking about whether I actually should run New York.

My boyfriend thought I was crazy. "You've put this much time, money and effort into running this race and now you want to call it quits? No babe, you're running this race." He had a point.

So the goal since getting "in" has been to get psyched for New York, to be excited about this race and plan to have fun with it, rather than being bitter and angry about the race and so far, it's worked. While I'm still slightly more about my TBA plans for my spring marathon than New York, the fact that training has started and that my Twitter feed is flooded with posts from other NYC Marathon runners, I'm finally started to get excited about toeing the line on the Verrazano Bridge on November 4. 

To everyone who has at some point or another, made it a point to tell me that New York is not a PR course and that I cannot and will not go sub-4, I cannot wait to prove you wrong. 

I have a plan for New York. On the one hand, I have a plan perfectly fitted into an Excel spreadsheet. On the other, I have a plan to run by feel, to aim to get in my key workouts (technique workouts, cross-training, long runs) and to not feel like my training plan is set in stone and that if I miss one workout, I'll throw all of my training out the window. I think it's going to work for me. 

The biggest change I'm making going into this cycle is incorporating speed work and goal pace runs into my training from Week 1, rather than building a base of hills and easy runs before getting into any kind of technical workouts. I'm excited about it. Speed work is no joke. It's damn hard. This morning, I ran 1/4 mile repeats - 8 of them - and felt like I was going to die on every single one of them. (I realized after the fact that I ran all but 1 of them between 30 seconds and 1 minute faster than I was supposed to...oops) When I got to my 4th, I thought about quitting. When I got to my 6th, I thought about quitting. When I finished the workout and jogged my way home at a nice, easy recovery pace, I knew that this training cycle is going to be very, very different. 

Dear Queensboro Bridge, you don't scare me. 

Marathon training is about getting ready...getting ready to tackle the distance...preparing yourself for the physical and mental challenge that running 26.2 miles entails.

Well guess what, New York? I don't need to get ready. I am ready.