Last week was my self-proclaimed official start of marathon training, even though the team training has not yet started.
My first long run, on Monday, was 8 miles. The weather is getting hotter and humid in New York, and my body is not quite happy about it. It takes much more effort to run right now that it took a couple of weeks ago, so the long run was painful. But I’m told that it should get better as my body adapts to the temperature and humidity.
Yesterday I ran a 10K (the UAE Healthy Kidney in Central Park) and it was a disaster.
I’m quite happy about it because I managed to make all the mistakes that I could think of in a single day: a great learning, and something you want to do early rather than later.
To start, it was really hot and humid, and the race started fairly late at 9AM: hard. I arrived to the race too late, and I didn’t have time to warm up and go to the bathroom one last time before the start. I started too fast. Because of all this, I lost time at a pit stop and on a walk to cool down.
NYRR was unusually disorganized, and a few times there was no water left at the fluid stations. I ended gulping 2 cups of water when I finally found some and I almost got myself sick. And yet, I ran a good second half, with negative splits in the last 3 miles and I finished the race in 1 hour and 3 minutes. And I got a medal, too, yay!
Hopefully the next weeks will be less eventful.