This is starting to feel like Groundhog Day!

Third virtual marathon in two weeks and fourth in six weeks after running the virtual Boston Marathon in 3:03.34, virtual London Marathon in 3:05.05 and virtual Chicago Marathon in 3:01.12.

Don’t worry, this is my final virtual marathon, of 2020 at least, hopefully, we can get back to see real racing next year.

So the thing I wanted to take away from these four virtual marathons was some consistency at running around the 3:10 – 3:15 mark.

From the first three virtual runs, I have got that consistency with all three within a 4 minute range and quite a bit faster than the goal range.

Going into today’s run, I didn’t really set myself a goal. I knew this was going to be a tough day. I know I said that last week and ran a 3:01.12 but three marathons in 14 days takes it out of you.

My legs do feel fine and the body feels more recovered than last week, so hopefully, I have recovered enough to get around and not be in too much pain.

For this run, I have opted to swap from my Nike Vaporfly Next% and run in my older Nike Vaporfly 4%. Purely because I don’t want to put more miles on the Next% but I do love the 4%. This is the shoe I ran my marathon PB in at the Tokyo Marathon 2019 and also my 10k & Half Marathon PB shoe as well as the shoe I ran in during my half Ironman PB race, we have had some great memories together.

The rest of my gear is pretty standard. Same shorts and gloves as my last five marathons and come on, it’s the NYC Marathon so you HAVE to wear the Dunkin beanie.

I woke at 5:45am on “race” morning and planned to set off at 6:45am but I just wasn’t feeling that motivated to get out there today. This is the only one of the four virtual marathons which has anything riding on it. I HAVE to run 26.2 miles to earn a place on the start line for a future New York City Marathon so this has to get done.

I got out and started at 7am, it is dark around here until approx 7:50am now so the first hour was run with the head torch on, the rest of the run I switch it to the red light and turn it around so that cars coming behind me can see the red light.

5km Splits: 21:32, 21:37, 21:30, 21:31, 21:42, 22:34, 28:37, 32:08

The first 13 miles went really well considering I was halfway through marathon number four. I was aiming for 7:00/mi pace and was averaging 6:56/mi by this stage. That was exaggerated by a fast mile 2 which was downhill.

From pretty much the halfway point I could feel my body was feeling tired. The legs were heavy, my feet were aching and my heart rate was 10bpm higher than last week.

I was starting to have to work harder and harder to stay on pace. The next 4 miles were a battle but I was just about managing to be around 7:00/mi, so higher, some lower.

I knew mile 18 and 19 were hilly so I wanted to see how they went before pushing any harder.

Mile 18 was slower than I had hoped for, mile 19 was even slower. My legs were struggling and I felt so tired and fatigued and still had 7.2 miles to go.

It was at this stage I said to myself. This is only a virtual race, there is no point pushing too hard to hold onto a pace that I am already struggling to hold. All I have to do is run 26.2.

So I stopped and walked for a little while. I jogged for a bit, then walked some more. No pressure, just a slow chilled last 7 miles to get the job done.

I spent most of this time listening to the new NYRR Virtual Racing app, which I had been using to track my run. There was some audio with it, telling me where I was on the real NYC Marathon course and playing some crowd noise. The tracking was exactly the same as my watch and stopped at 26.2 miles in 3:25.05, almost 24 minutes slower than last week but I didn’t care.

I had run the 26.2 miles and earned that place in the New York City Marathon. I am coming back for my 4th NYC Marathon and cannot wait!!

I am really hoping I can get a place in the 2021 race as this falls on my late fathers birthday, so if I can get into that year I am planning on running it in his memory and doing some fundraising for the local hospice who took care of him during his battle with liver cancer. Today was step 2 in that plan. Step 1 was to be lucky enough to land one of the 1,000 virtual marathon for guaranteed entry spots. Step 3 is to be lucky enough to gain entry into 2021 but to be honest, I will be over the moon running 2021, 2022 or 2023, even happier if I could run all three.

For the last three years, I have run the New York City Marathon and then taken a two week break to bring my running year to an end and take the time to let the body recover from a year of running.

From tomorrow, I plan to take at least two weeks off again to recover and recharge ready to start working towards those 2021 races and goals.