This morning I decided not to go for a PR in the New Jersey Marathon.
I did not come to this decision lightly but it dawned on me that I have exactly four weeks to finish my training and have only this morning completed an 18-mile run – my longest training run to date for this race. Complicating matters is the fact that I’m riding the Battenkill Gran Fondo next week and will be unable to do a long run.
Training for Battenkill is an entirely different post that I’ll get to, but suffice it to say, I’ve only ridden my bike twice since January and am completely unprepared for the 65 miles and 5,000 feet of climbing.
Back to New Jersey.
As I mentioned, this morning was my longest run to date when, if I was going to try and PR the race, it should have been my second or third 20 – 22 miler.
I’m surprisingly okay with the decision. I was thinking about what I wanted to do at around mile 12 when I came upon Tom, a fellow runner/cyclist whom I had met a few years ago cycling with the NYCC. Tom was doing a long run in training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon and we fell into step together for about two miles while he finished up.
We started chatting about, what else? Running and racing. It was during our chat that I made the decision and said it out loud. Not that I need an excuse or a rationale, but I find a lot of satisfaction (and mentioned this to Tom) in my recent running accomplishments. In Philly last November, I took more than 6.5 minutes off my marathon PR and earlier this month, PR’d a13.1 at the NYC Half by more than three minutes. Both of those personal records were from 2011.
It’s not that I don’t want to run a faster marathon; my time in Philly gave me the confidence to go for a Boston Qualifier — something I never thought I’d be able to do. But I know I’m not doing it this year; I’m not in shape for it. If my training was better, more consistent and I didn’t have to miss a long run for a bicycle race, I would be singing a different tune.
I’m heading into the Jersey Marathon to have fun, maybe make a video and tick another notch in my marathon belt.
Anyone else running it?
Here’s the run from this morning:
