First half-marathon of 2010!

Crossing the finish line, action shot!

Official finisher photo, looking nice!


The photos are watermarked because I cheated and stole them with Snagit.

We aren't even one month in to 2010 and Taylor and I are already well on our way to one of our goals for the year! This past Sunday we ran the Manhattan Half Marathon, part of the New York Road Runners Half Marathon Grand Prix. Basically, they sponsor a half marathon in each borough every year.

This one really snuck up on us since the only training that I have done for the best few months has been to expand my stomach! Our training basically consisted of two training runs the two weekends leading up to the race. We did 7 miles on January 10 and 10 miles on January 18 and that was it!

I have to say, though, the race wasn't really that bad. For starters, the start line was less than 2 miles from our apartment. This is in contrast to the Brooklyn Half Marathon where we'll have to travel about an hour and a half BEFORE the 8:00am start! Second, the weather was about perfect for a half marathon. It was about 40 degrees and cloudy but not raining (well, until the very end). It could have been a little warmer, but it worked for us.

We woke up at around 6:45am, ate some breakfast and hopped in a cab to the race. When we got there, we dropped off our bags and headed to the start line to do some stretching before the start. Evidently I was faster in a former life because we were in corral 3, which was pretty close to the front. Turns out we probably should have been a little further back because once the race started people were passing us left and right! We were running at about a 9minute 45second pace. It's true, that is much slower than I have been at other times, but we were just trying to set a very achievable goal to beat next time (haha).

The race consisted of two full loops of Central Park followed by another mile of the third loop to come in at 13.1 miles. Central Park has MANY hills, but I have to say they didn't really bother me, perhaps because we were going so slow. We didn't really struggle too much in the first lap and took some Goo (a carbohydrate boost packet that runners use) at about mile 6. On the second loop of the race we were feeling good so we sped our pace up to about 9:30 miles. We started to get bored at this point so we had a good time making fun of other runners (I'm talking about you, Crazy Arms McGee) and talking about when we will buy our first house (NOT in New York City, that's for sure!).

The last 3 miles we were just ready to be done running so we picked it up a little more. Our last three mile paces were 9:31, 9:24 and 9:09. Now that's what I call conserving your energy until the end!

In the end, our time was 2:07:20. My slowest half marathon to date, but a good starting point for some serious improvement in 2010. We haven't set a formal goal, but I definitely want to break my personal record of 1:55:48 this year. Stay tuned!!