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 !!

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.