With New York now less than 10 days away I guess it is time to commit to some goals for the race. Writing them down on here then sets them in stone and no backing out and its a beat down if I fail…. or this is just a rough idea of what I would like to do next Sunday.

With the marathon, you can plan your race, the pace, the target times etc but you just never know how you will feel on race day, the weather could throw you off and other factors come into play. The main thing is to be prepared to adapt your race plan and just see how it goes.

That said, I do like to go into race day with 4 goals in mind.

1. Finish the race
2. Run sub 3:30
3. Run a Course PB
4. Run a PB

Originally, when I signed up to run the New York City marathon (for the 3rd time) I wanted to run sub 3:15 which would have been a PB. Since then I went on to run 3:01 in Tokyo. With running so close to that mystical 3 hour mark, naturally, my focus turned to breaking 3 hours. Could I do it on a tougher course in New York? I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t, obviously a lot more hard work was required but I am always prepared to put in as much effort as I can do. So the goal was to try and run sub 3 hours.

Then in May, I sustained a grade 2 tear of the right calf muscle, resulting in 12 weeks of no running and a gradual increase in the mileage over the next 12 weeks. It wasn’t until mid-September when I finally got back to running the same kind of mileage as I was at pre-injury. With New York just 6 weeks away it wasn’t the best preparation for a marathon.

Since the injury, I have been working with Purdue Performance initially the focus being injury recovery but then as that improved quicker than expected, we focused more and more on New York. I have since run PB’s in 5k and half marathon and also a PB at half Ironman distance.

The confidence gained from those PB’s and long runs in training has really helped to get me back on track mentally as well. Being injured and facing weeks out is a tough thing to take. The uncertainty of whether the calf would be strong enough to push hard or whether it would stand up to the long-distance runs was something that was always in the back of my mind. As we built the weekly mileage up and the long runs went from 8 miles to 10 miles up to 20 miles, the confidence grew. Not the arrogant confidence but the confidence in my body. Knowing that it can still run and not just run but the PB’s have shown that I can run faster than before.

So could I run a PB in New York? I think looking at it realistically, it is too soon in the recovery to be running a PB on a far tougher course than Tokyo.

My Race Plan:

I have been assigned Wave 1, Orange Corral C which runs on top of the Verrazano Bridge.

Looking at the pace chart below, I will have the 3:15 pacer in my corral.

I think that I can run faster than 3:15 even at this stage in my recovery, so I have the option to drop back into any corral in the Green start. That gives me the option to move into Green Corral B with the 3:05 pace group.

Running with the pace group would be good for me as I tend to run between 1 – 10 secs faster per mile when I am pacing myself. The pacer “should” hold a steady pace and give me more control than if I was running faster and serging to get back on to my split times.

That would mean running a 12 minute course PB compared to the 3:17 at TCS NEW YORK CITY MARATHON 2018 and bring me in around 4 minutes shy of my 3:01 PB at TOKYO MARATHON 2019 I think this is achievable and not stretching myself too much. Worst case, I find it hard sticking to the pace and I drop back slightly. I still have that 12 minute buffer to achieve the course PB.

So what do the NYRR Race Predictor think my finish time would be?

Using my average weekly mileage of 38 miles, my longest run of 20 miles and average easy run pace of 9:00 min/mile combined with my recent 1:27 half marathon PB, my 2018 NYC marathon 3:17 time and my age, they came out with the following:

Pretty much spot on with what my expectations are at this stage. The app says my recent training suggests I am in the 3:05 area, whereas recent results suggest 3:10. Give one of those results was 12 months ago, I am not too concerned with that stat.

Obviously, this is only going off data and does not take into account the recent injury or general health etc but on paper, it agrees with my goal of running with the 3:05 pace group and if it gets too hard dropping back a little.

I am excited to see what I can run and see whether 3:05 in New York is achievable for me.