This race recap took me longer to write than any other I’ve done. It was a really hard training cycle and I even put off writing about training because I guess I don’t love writing about things that are bad? I should probably not be like that and also talk to my therapist and also get a therapist.
Anyway, I’m doing it now.
Continue reading “Pain Is A Gift: 2019 TCS NYC Marathon Race Recap”
I always think it’s silly when people take breaks from posting online and then apologize for their absence. I think it’s okay to take breaks. Also, I usually hadn’t noticed their absence until they announced it. But now, I feel the need to apologize for not posting for over a month.
To be honest, I’m never sure how many people are reading this blog. (Two? Five? Negative one? Wait, how would that be possible…). Lately, I’ve had so much going on elsewhere in my life that I’ve let blogging slide. I have been feeling guilty about it so here I am! Pretty much everything I do is to avoid guilt.
I’m going to start by writing a post about weeks 1 through 4 in my marathon training. I’ll then resume writing about each week individually, plus the two races I need to recap! There will be a bit of catching up to do. Bear with me.
Now that I have run two (2) whole marathons, I am a qualified marathon expert. Or at least, somewhat knowledgeable. Okay, I am still an idiot who doesn’t know anything. But now that I have run two marathons, I can at least compare them. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to run an Olympic qualifying marathon. Also, if you’re looking to run an Olympic qualifying marathon, you are very much on the wrong blog.
In this post, I’m going to take a close look at the two 26.2-mile races I’ve run in my very short life as a marathon runner: the 2018 TCS NYC Marathon and the 2019 Novo Nordisk New Jersey Marathon. I’m kind of a numbers nerd, and I thought this could be a fun way of comparing the two training cycles and races – examining what I did better, what I could still do better, and how luck and life circumstances played a role. Let’s have some fun! Or maybe it’ll just be me who has fun!
Continue reading “A Tale of Two Marathons: How I PR’d by 12 Minutes (with a BQ!)”
I started writing this post last December and then never finished it. As I’m winding down my second marathon training cycle (the NJ Marathon is in less than two weeks!) I decided to revisit it with some fresh perspective.
I wrote a full recap about the TCS NYC Marathon I ran last November. This post will be less of a recap and more of a look back at what I got right and wrong – both in the weeks and hours before the race, as well as during. I no longer feel any regret about the race but, as always, I want to learn from my experiences so I can get better instead of worse, which I think is always the idea?
Continue reading “Thoughts on My First Marathon: What I Got Right & What I Did Not”
Now what?
First of all, if you submitted to the 2019 TCS NYC Marathon lottery, you are one among a record 117,709 applicants. Note that this is not the total number of people hoping to run the race, only the number of people who submitted through the lottery. It does not include runners guaranteed entry through time qualifying standards, charity fundraising, the 9+1 program, international tour operators, completion of 15 or more NYC marathons, virtual races, or those who cancelled in 2018 and chose to run this year instead.
It’s just the number of runners who submitted via lottery.
If you did not get in through the lottery this year, count yourself among 107,999 applicants who were rejected, as only 10,510 runners were accepted. That’s 8.93% of those who submitted. Trust me. I did the math on my phone calculator, which is never wrong.
Note: This is the first in a series of several posts about some old school NYC Marathons (and perhaps other races?). There probably will be nothing all that surprising here if you’ve already seen or participated in these races, but if you haven’t and are curious to know what they were like, then I hope you find this interesting.
I had originally intended to publish it as one long post before the 2018 NYC Marathon but couldn’t get it done in time. So it languished in my drafts until recently when I’ve had more time to finish it. Thank you, unemployment!
I’ve decided to break them up into smaller posts, one for each year’s race I watched. Otherwise, this would be ridiculously long and you would grow very tired of reading it. You might already be tired of reading this. If not, please continue.
I tend to write lengthy race recaps. This is due to my inability to discern important details from unimportant ones – every single event that happens in my life seems to hold equal weight, and I want to mention it all. For this recap, I will try my best to summarize lest I write a post that makes War and Peace look like a set of Cliffs Notes by comparison. I won’t break down every single mile because, honestly, I don’t remember every single mile. That said, I want to give a good overview of what the lead-up to the race was like, what the race was like, how I felt afterwards, and what newcomers to the NYC Marathon can expect in following years.
Let’s face it, this is going to be long.
Continue reading “The Beast Within: 2018 TCS NYC Marathon Race Recap”
If you’re looking to murder me, I can tell you exactly where I will be on the morning of Sunday, November 4, 2018. Only downside is, you’ll have to travel to Staten Island.
Continue reading “Some Possible (And Not Possible) NYC Marathon Finishing Times”
Hello! I am so excited to announce that I have signed up to run the 2018 TCS New York City Marathon. I’ll be running as part of Fred’s Team, raising money for cancer research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in honor of my mom Joan, who passed away from the disease in November.
Continue reading “Hello, I Am Running the 2018 TCS NYC Marathon”
My Body Is A Machine 