NYC Marathon 2014 - Highs & Lows of running five boroughs

After the year long wait and months of training I finally made it to the start of New York City marathon last Sunday ready to explore 26.2 miles of the beloved city. Weather forecast predicted it to be freezing cold with ridiculous windy conditions. I ignored the forecasts all week before the race hoping they were lying. But they were spot on and I could feel the cold wind blowing when I opened my garage on race day morning. A brave friend from my RVRR running club woke up early on this crazy weather Sunday to drive a packed van of 5 runners to Staten Island. We had a blast picking each other’s brain on their planned strategy to conquer the five boroughs of New York City.

Awesome friends ready to rock NYC

We reached Staten Island by 7:30 am and I was not scheduled to start the race until 10:30 am. I was well prepared with several layers of throwaway clothes. Ate a bagel and banana and sipped Gatorade for breakfast. After few trips to the portapoty I headed to my corral by 10:00 am. 30 minutes before the race I threw away extra layers of clothing and did some dynamic stretches to get warmed up. Despite the cold weather I was determined to run in half sleeve shirt and shorts, as I usually get sweaty during races. Guns went off exactly at 10:30 am and we were off running on top of Verrazano Bridge.

 Aerial shot of Verrazano Bridge(Thanks Google)

Staten Island was the first borough to tackle and Mile 1 was the hilliest part of the course. Wind was blasting us in all directions and my only goal was to run the 2-mile bridge without getting blown off. Just as I ran down the bridge into Brooklyn (2nd borough) there was a wall of A+ noisy & insanely energetic crowd in Halloween costumes screaming at runners on both sides of the road. Stayed in the middle of the road just soaking in the excitement and enjoying all the funny posters enthusiastic spectators held in their hands. I stayed calm for the next 11 miles and tried my best not to get carried away by the crowd support. I was patient and maintained tight control over my 9:30ish pace and ran at this conversational pace till mile 13. Made it to half way point on Pulaski bridge in 2 hours 5 minutes and crossed over to the next borough of Queens. Volume of crowd got thinner and I continued to run at the same pace till I hit the Queensboro bridge at mile 15. No spectators were allowed on this hilly 1-mile Bridge. It was dead silence around and all I could hear was the heavy breathing and feet thumping of runners. along the tough uphill portion of the bridge. I saw many folks who ran like hell on flat roads of Brooklyn were struggling to climb the Queensboro Bridge. Numerous runners were cramping and stretching. I slowed down a bit and kept chugging along the bridge remembering all the hill repeats I had done during the training.

Chugging along Queensboro Bridge

Just as I crossed the 16-mile marker into 1st Ave of York, massive crowd were greeting runners and their noise level was 10 times louder than Brooklyn. My plan was to start pushing my pace a tiny bit. But I let loose and little did I know I was running 45 seconds faster than first 16 miles. I was picking on runners and chasing them down left and right. Passed 4:00 pacer and maintained a clear lead over him all through the fourth borough of Bronx and as I crossed the Wills Ave bridge entering Harlem and all of a sudden my hips began to tighten up and distracted me totally from focusing on my plan. My body was sending warning signs and all the energy I had for mile 17-20 dissipated. Hips and Quads had absolutely no power to continue pushing and I slowed down quite a bit. I began doubting everything from my volume of long runs, strength training to nutrition and hydration.

Ran out of gas by 35k

I looked around and saw many folks struggling to walk and I felt lucky that I’m still running. I relaxed a little and gave myself loads of pep talk. Told myself not to prematurely panic and I’ll deal with whatever happens. I was too caught up in my own thoughts to enjoy crowd support but continued to run south on 5th Ave of Manhattan without looking at my watch and made it successfully to Central Park at Mile 24. After another mile of chugging I saw post-saying 2k to go. My face lit up a little and my legs seemed to be moving tiny bit faster. Little after mile 25 I exited the park and turned right into 59th st and Central park south. Smile was back on my face and started noticing enthusiastic crowd again.

Approaching Columbus circle

Kept fist pumping and high-fiving kids in the crowd grinning at cameras and made the final right turn into Central park at Columbus circle. It was getting insanely real and I crossed the finish line with a huge roar. My finish time was 4:16:27, which is an improvement (PR) of 27 minutes over NJ Long branch Marathon last year.

Almost over

Finishers printed on NY Times . Thanks Elaine for pics

It was incredibly emotional and I could barely walk at that point. Collected my finisher medal and kept moving hoping to find some friends. One of my friends from running club was volunteering at finish putting heat sheets on runners. I hugged her and I got teary-eyed just thinking about what had happened. Last 10k is when you want to feel “How much do you want it “. Sadly that’s when plan and strategy were thrown off. Thanks to all training during polar vortex I handled the windy freezing conditions without any concerns. Probably biggest mistake was letting loose at mile 17 which cost the pace for last 10k. There is a reason why they say marathon starts at mile 20. A friend who ran NYC last year had told me few days ago “You will develop respect for this course”. I now get what he meant. I have a newfound respect for the course, crowd and energy of the race. NYC marathon is truly a world-class event I’m thrilled to be part of it this year.

All my friends had a fantastic day of racing and we wrapped up the evening with food and shenanigans. We absolutely will cherish the sweet memories of this evening for a long time.

That's how we roll after a race !!

Breaking 2

It took me 2 years to break two hours for a half. I was stuck at 2:02 times for quite sometime. And on certain hot/humid conditions it went further downhill to 2:20ish. But I'm glad to report it finally happened last weekend at the Adirondacks half marathon in upstate NY. My official time was 1:54:59. I ran at a comfortable aerobic pace for first 5 miles. Then I pushed slightly for the next 5 miles. Last three miles I picked up my pace and was passing folks and got most of them who had left me in the dust at mile 2.My pace for the first 10 miles hovered between 8.5-9 min/mile. My 11th mile was a bit slower at 9 min/mile even though it felt like I was pushing at that point. I looked up the map and there was a long stretch of uphill at that mile. 12th mile stretch got flatter and my pace improved to 8.25 min/mile. 13th was the faster to 8.05 min/mile. And I ran like hell in the last 0.2 miles at under 6 min/mile. Reward was a 7 minute PR. Best part was this happened during peak part of my marathon training.
I went into the race pretty much beaten up with track and tempo workouts earlier in the week. And the weather didn't help at all. It was hot and humid at around 85 degrees. I stuck to my plan of going at comfortable pace for most of the race by constantly reminding me I need to treat it like a training run and not a race. It really feels great to get this monkey off the back. Course was super scenic and with long stretches of rolling hills. Adirondacks in fall season is absolutely stunning. Finish line was infront of Lake Schroon and I stood in waist deep water after the race for good 30 minutes. Post race food and drinks were awesome. One of the best organized races I've run so far.
I'm focusing all my energy to get through the remaining 4 weeks of training hoping to get to starting line of NYC marathon on Nov 2nd. My base building started 10 months ago and have been following a very balanced training with 4 running days, strength training on 2 days and cross training on 2 days (spinning and swim). So far my legs are holding up. Focusing on one workout at a time without setting any expectations whatsoever.

Shorter & Sweeter

That’s how I would describe my 2014 racing so far and I’m pleased that the results have been very sweet. After 3 years of only road running I decided to experiment on different terrains that were totally alien to me. So in 2014 I’ve only run short distance races from 5k – 10k and they were run mostly on trail or cross country courses.

Trail races at Morristown (5k), Chimney Rock (5 miler) and North face Bear Mountain (10k) were the races that challenged my road running legs to focus on picking up my feet and landing properly while running on rocks and roots. I think trail running helped in solving some of the foot drop injury issues I suffered for most of 2013. As I got comfortable my times on trail races improved as well. TCS World 10k was the only road race back home in India run in 95 degree hot weather. Just after Towpath training run heat and humidity were back in the east coast. My running club puts on an awesome cross country race series. I signed up just to treat them as heat training. I ran three of the four races in the series and all of them were pretty much in or close to 90 degree humid weather. These XC races totally put me in the most uncomfortable running zone I’ve ever run and the pay off was the tiny bit improvement with each race. Thanks to all the track & hill repeats in spring which helped to sustain and recover from these high intensity races. I hated each XC race after a mile or so into the race but felt very gratifying once I finished the race. I guess that’s the beauty of 5k races. This series has indeed become my favorite club event and I look forward to run or volunteer in the future. 

What’s next? Its time to add distance to my legs and see if I can get to the starting line of NYC marathon in November injury free. Absolutely no expectations. Just focusing on one workout at a time.  

Home Run(s)

I just returned from a ridiculously short but an amazing and memorable trip to Bangalore. Like many of my runner friends I have started to incorporate running on all my vacations and outings. I really wanted to capture this trip experience in a blog post, as it was my first time running a race in my Hometown. It would be technically wrong to call Bangalore my hometown as I was born and raised in the beautiful town of Mysore. But for all practical purposes I have to reluctantly accept Bangalore as my hometown for now. 

While planning this trip I checked for small distance races around Bangalore and TCS World 10k perfectly fit the need. TCS really put on a kick ass event. They had marathon style expo a week before the race. I had to miss the expo as I was only reaching India couple of days before the race.  They had the option of picking out BIB day before the race and also had organized a “Pasta with Pundits” luncheon.  I came to know that legendary Olympian Carl Lewis was the ambassador for the race and he was at the luncheon answering all sorts of questions from an excited audience.  It’s during this conference I came to know that Carl Lewis has been a serious Vegan for past 20-30 years. Needless to say my respect for the legend quadrupled. It’s truly mind-blowing to imagine he was winning all those Olympic gold medals on a Vegan diet.

Legendary Carl Lewis @ Bangalore

Weather in Bangalore was super hot and consistently hovered between 88-99 degrees (Fahrenheit) for the entire day.  I have been training in the Siberian weather in New Jersey and proper hydration was absolutely necessary if I were to run a decent race. I gulped at least 1-2 gallons of coconut water  per day not only because it was hot but also it’s rare to find such amazingly fresh coconut water in New Jersey. It was also peak Mango season in India and I made sure I feasted on several varieties of Mangos every day. I was severely jet-lagged and couldn’t sleep the whole two nights prior to race day. Hot conditions were getting to my nerves and I was praying for rain during the race. My prayers were somewhat answered and it did rain the night before the race day. It hardly mattered, as it was still 95 degrees at 6 am just before the race start. I’m really thankful for my brother Ram for waking up at un-godly hour to take me to Kanteerva Stadium (race location). My super excited family members including my little nephew and nieces had promised to show up to cheer and I was really pumped. Race organizers even had a runner-tracking app, which helped them track my progress.

There were several categories of races and I was running the open 10k, which included about 26000 runners. They even had an elite race that started later with speedy Kenyans and Ethiopians. Race started promptly at 6:20 am and I was in the second wave and made it to the start within minutes after gun went off. I ran the first two kilometers at a comfortable heart rate of 155 and was feeling good. It felt like a dream running in those streets and brought back memories from my college days. I used to hang out with my college friends on the very same spots while eating all sorts of roadside junk food. After hitting the half waypoint I started playing “Chase the runner” game.  I was focusing only on the runners ahead of me and working up to pass them and getting passed by some of them in return.  It was only getting hotter by the minute and I made sure to drink and pour water over my head at all the water stations. I was approaching the popular “Vidhana Soudha” which is the Capitol Hill of the state government of “Karnataka”. My loyal family members were out there waiting for me just past the KM 7 marker. Their cheering and screaming made me jump and I was thrilled to pieces. I stopped looking at my watch for the last 3 kilometers and picked up my pace. I spotted my brother about 800 meters before the finish and went on an all out sprint afterwards.  I crossed the finish line after 56 minutes and was quite disappointed for not being able to finish in less than 50 minutes. Nevertheless it was still a PR for me as it was only my 2^nd 10k race ever. My first one was at Bear Mountain trail few weeks earlier.

I must have wandered for 3-4 kilometers before finally spotting my brother. Finally met up my family at a restaurant where I had a fabulous south Indian breakfast.

I’m grateful to my endurance coach and biomechanics guru Lou Cookson for all his help in strengthening my injury prone body and also improving my overall running form. Many thanks to my awesome running club RVRR and especially to our speed workout coach Peter Priolo for all the recent improvements in my pace. I couldn’t have imagined running in these tough conditions without your help and support.

Thanks RVRR.  Courtesy Elaine Acosta for the pic.

It was an amazing trip and was great to see my Mom, siblings and their kids after two years. I’m already looking forward to run “Kaveri Trail Marathon” next year, which is held near Mysore. 

Train more, Race less

I spent second half of 2013 salvaging my tired, depleted body from various mysterious overuse injuries.  I think I subjected my body to way more than it could handle during spring/summer of 2013 and predictably it started to revolt against every form of workout. My legs and core clearly had no strength to support continued pounding of long runs over 10 miles. For the past six months my emphasis has been on strength and cross training. I honestly believe these two activities have restored my body and saved me from becoming a total couch potato.

I have spent lot many hours in the gym spinning bikes, swimming, climbing stair master and Elliptical machines.  Religiously spent one to two hours on Pilates, weights, balancing, yoga and strength training per week.  My body started to respond to running since November 2013 and I have been slowly building mileage since then.  I could muster about 50 running miles each on November and December. Had an ankle sprain during a trail 5k in January and suffered a minor setback for couple of weeks.  I backed off again and after few weeks of rest I was back out running again.  Thanks to rest and strength training I managed to run about 75 miles in February and wrapped up March with 92 miles.  I did a 5-mile trail race at Chimney Rock Park in NJ today. This was a ridiculously technical trail with elevation changes of about 2000 feet within 5 miles. Trail was muddy, insanely rocky and tree roots coming out randomly at places I’m pleased to have finished this without breaking any part of my body LOL.

All my runs have become time based as opposed to distance-based training I was doing in the past. I have been learning to run at targeted heart rate zones, which I never did in the past. I have even signed up for the RVRR speed sessions on Tuesdays. I have no expectations about what my pace should be. Plan is to just show up at the track and do what super coach Pete tells me to do. I’m alternating my long runs between roads and trail to teach my body to land properly on rocky trails. Hope is that trail & hilly runs will improve additional muscle groups that doesn't happen purely with road running.  My long runs have gotten up to half marathon distance but I’m in no hurry to race at this point. I have a spot for NYC marathon in November but will not think about it till July.  I yet do not have the confidence my body can cope with marathon training. My goal is to build an endurance base and get my body ready enough to survive marathon training.  We’ll see how I feel by July and then decide whether or not to pursue the marathon training. So for now my mantra is “Train more, Race less”. Or at least stop daydreaming about races until I get used to consistent running and recover well from longer runs.

Recovery attempt – take 1

After three months of mysterious injuries I think I’m slowly getting back to my first workout love (a.k.a Running).  My list of injuries started with Peroneal Tendinitis on my left foot and it quickly radiated upwards to my ITB.  Within weeks I had lot of difficulty picking up my left foot. Due to some strange locking mechanism on my upper left leg, my lower leg was rotating outwards when I run. This was causing too much stress on my lower back on the right side and bout of Shin Splints on both legs.

I went to see a sports medicine doctor in NJ and he first suspected foot drop due to accelerated compartment syndrome. He first sent me to neurologist to get an EMG (Electromyography).  It did not reveal any nerve damage. The next step was Compartment testing to see if there is any unusual pressure built in the lower leg compartments. Painful procedure but luckily it did not reveal any compartment syndrome. Lower back MRI did not reveal any herniated disc and a brain MRI revealed everything was normal. I was getting frustrated with test after test and none of them helping to figure out what’s going on.

During these frustrating months I had cut down running completely and switched to strength / weight training, physical therapy and cross training. My cross training activities included swimming, spinning, walking, elliptical & occasional pool running. Both intensity and volume of all workouts were reduced to about 30% of what I was doing before. Building patience and being happy with what I could do each day was part of this exercise.

After about two months of physical therapy, my therapist suggested to start running slowly for 5-10 minutes and back off at slightest hint of botheration.  One key aspect of running was to focus a lot on picking up my left foot (which had the foot drop).  To my surprise I was able to run on treadmill for about a mile (10 minutes). At around 10 minutes, my left leg reverted to drop and rotating outwards. So I practiced running for 5-10 minutes to the point of irritation and stopping. Slowly I was able to increase the duration to 15-20 minutes.  With this approach I have been so far able to build running 30-45 minutes about three times per week. I’m still spending a lot of time strength / weight training and cross workouts. I just checked my training logs for November and to my surprise I have been able to run 50 miles, which was accumulated, with several shorter runs of 2-4 miles each. At this point I’m able to run 10-12 miles per week. I’m extremely pleased with the approach and will continue to build slowly. My left leg still tightens up towards end of runs and my lower back gets irritated.  Heat and ice therapy has been helping a lot to reduce the inflammation. With a day of rest between runs I’ve been able to stay active once again.

I have run 9 NY roadrunner races this year and have a guaranteed spot to run the NYC Marathon in 2014 fall.  I’m really not looking that far ahead. Needless to mention I had to cancel my two fall races marathon at Hartford and a half marathon at Philly. I still have good memories of running NYC half and Stratton Faxon half marathons this year and also NJ marathon in the spring 2013 with a personal improvement of 26 minutes over my first marathon. To wrap up the year, I ran a fun toy drive 5k called Big Chill at Rutgers today with my running club and was able to run in 29 minutes. I’ll take this happily as I struggled with thoughts of never able to run again 2 months ago.

Am I back? No I don’t think so as I still have bouts of irritation after 3-4 miles of running. Still doctors are clueless as to why my legs behave the way they do. But the positive approach is getting stronger by the day. I’m enjoying each workout for what it is without setting any expectation or comparing with my past achievements. Patience and taking one step at a time has become my mantra for now.

Payback Time

Returning to running after two weeks vacation at Glacier National park has been wild with lots of ups and downs.  I have no one else to blame but myself for some of the dumbest mistakes I did upon returning from vacation. Ignoring 90 miles of hiking I did at GNP, I resumed running and pounded 28 miles per week for two consecutive weeks.  To make things more interesting I replaced my worn out Saucony Progrid shoes, which had 4 mm heel to toe drop with Saucony Virrata that has 0 mm heel to toe drop. I did break the shoes in by running 1-2 miles at a time but I was certainly not sensible enough to ease into running with 1-2 milers. By second week of August I started getting pain on outside of left ankle that affected my running form.  It became harder to pick up my left foot as smoothly as my right. My left leg started pronating outwards and I could feel changes in my running form.To add to my misery my right leg had to work extra harder resulting in shin splints on the right leg.

It was time to visit Podiatrist and diagnosis revealed I have developed Peroneal Tendinitis on my left foot.  Needless to say my Podiatrist recommended rest and ice. I’m a very good student and I have been icing like it’s my job and cut down running to 5-10 miles per week. Also I bought a new pair of familiar Saucony Progrid shoes. Experimenting new shoes will have to wait for another time. Spending lot more time cross training with swimming, Spinning, Elliptical and rowing workouts. Continuing Pilates & Iron strength workout without the plyometric components. 

I cancelled my registration from Hartford Marathon and I was pleasantly surprised to hear they refund the registration fees 30 days before the race something that rarely occurs with marathon registrations.  I still have the registration open for Philly half marathon scheduled on Nov-17^th.  I’m not looking forward to anything beyond my next workout at the moment.  I had scheduled to run 4 smaller NYRR races (5ks & 4 milers) to before end of the year to qualify for 2014 NYC marathon.

Will take one day at a time to see what I can do on these events.

Notes to myself:

•   Do not plan vacation in the middle of marathon training. Hiking in the middle of marathon training was not a good idea.
• Ease slowly back to running after a break of 1-2 weeks.  Start with 1-2 milers.
• If you make dumb mistakes, you will pay back for it pretty quickly :( 

My good friend Bill from the running club rightly said “you only get two legs for this life. Take care of them.” That said, I’m a pretty patient person and take things as they come. So I’m enjoying the short runs and the cross training workouts at the moment. Long runs will have to wait till I’m ready again.