I have less than one month until the New York City marathon. I have already started to plan my trip, though. Rather than thinking of visiting people while I am halfway through Connecticut on my drive down, I have actually started to call people up first to see if they would be available. I have also called a friend about a racing singlet that he is getting created for RIT alumni; I am hoping to be able to race in it since I will be pacing another RIT alum through his first marathon.
New York should be interesting. The goal is to pace my friend through a three hour marathon. His body should be able to stand up to that pretty easily. He has been training hard, and a single marathon should be easy for somebody who ran a relay from the Pacific to the Atlantic. My other friend that is providing the racing singlet wrote a book about that run called Coast to Coast.
We are going to start out slow; hopefully, in the 7:30 to 7:45 per mile range. The beginning of the race sees the highest elevation on the course, there will be a big crowd around us, and we are not going to get a lot of opportunity to actually warm up before the run begins. Starting slow will get us warmed up and ready for some quicker miles later on.
After 3 miles or so, we should be in the 6:20 to 6:30 per mile range. I imagine that we will keep that pace up for about 18 to 20 miles. After that, the goal will be to maintain 6:50 pace; anything slower will have to be checked against splits to make sure that we make the three hour mark. As long as we can start out nice and easy for the first three miles and we do not try to go any faster than 6:20s, we should be able to keep that pace through until near the end.
My goal over the next week or two is to figure out exactly where I want to be split wise for each 5 kilometers on the course. Knowing about where we want to be in terms of the paces listed above will make the run easier. I will be checking how far above or below three hour pace we are at each mile, but ideally we will have plenty of leeway at the end of the race so that those numbers will always be quite a bit below goal pace from around mile 5 or 6 on.
I believe that New York has a system like Boston where you can get splits for a runner text messaged to your phone after each 5 kilometer block and at the halfway and finishing spots. If that is actually the case, I wonder how difficult it would be to write something that would automatically update this website with our progress? That would be interesting.
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