The summer and fall edition of Race Pace Training Diaries follows Jess D, a Race Pace Runner, training for the 2014 New York City Marathon with the goal of becoming a faster runner and setting a new Personal Record. Learn more about Jess and her goals here.
The last couple weeks of training have been amazing. I started seeing some really noticeable results in my runs and workouts- and nothing makes for a happier runner.
While the physical results and hard numbers are a huge part of training, you might have seen in my earlier post that half the battle is mental as well. This was something I was struggling with before working with Jess, and I’ve really grown in these past 13 weeks. That become clear to me at the Staten Island Half this past Sunday.
Jess and I had a great race plan laid out for this day. I finally felt ready to go sub 2 and she provided me with a race day strategy to help me achieve this goal. The plan was to go out with the 2 hour pace group and when I hit the last 5k of the race to push ahead of them. For the last 800m I was going to give it all I had and end on a high note. I felt great about this.
Well, nothing like a snafu in your plans to give you race morning anxiety.
The race was 10 minutes from start time, and I couldn’t find the 2 hour pace group anywhere. It skipped from 1:55 to 2:05. Crap! What do I do? I made a game time decision to go out with the 1:55 group and stay with them as long as I could.
Well, that didn’t work out so well either. The pace leader was moving around quite frequently, and when you couple that with a congested course, it doesn’t make for a great running situation. I tried to swerve and keep up – this resulted in me twisting my ankle twice in potholes I couldn’t see coming. By mile 4 I was physically and mentally exhausted. I knew there was no way I would be able to sustain that for 9 more miles and I made the decision at the 4th mile marker to let the pace group go.
I felt overheated, slightly light headed and deflated. I thought back to advice Jess had given me during the week- if you feel like you’re struggling, back off of your pace by 15 seconds. So I did just that. I gave myself 15 seconds of a run walk, pulled down my arm sleeves, guzzled my water and said to myself, “you haven’t come this far to let yourself bonk in a race now. Suck it up and give this all you’ve got.”
I re-started my run. And paced myself the remaining 9.2 miles. I focused on each mile, not the outcome or the horrible start of the race, but getting myself to the finish line and trying to salvage the goal that we had set. And that’s just what happened. I finished in 1:59:01.
While seeing the official time was AMAZING, what was more exciting to me in that moment was that I knew that 4 months ago that race would have played out completely differently. I would have allowed myself to have a pity party that my game plan didn’t work, and mentally self-sabotaged the rest of the race…and probably the rest of the day to be honest. I felt emotional. Not because of the numbers on my watch, but because I know I have grown so much in these past 13 weeks and I couldn’t be happier about it and content with this place where I am right now.
I hope that the NYC Marathon is a culmination of this experience for me. I hope that I crush it and have the best marathon day ever. But if for some reason I don’t, I can honestly say I will be ok with that now. I won’t self-sabotage, I will reflect positively on this amazing journey. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Angela says
OF COURSE she also looks absolutely stunning post-13.1! Great job, Jess!
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