Ready for the NYC Half Marathon! Not...

I know; my blog is late this week.  I could come up with a million reasons: I was training for my half marathon next weekend, I was cleaning my house before my kids picked up a serious illness, I was knitting sweaters for hairless puppies.  Truth is that life just got in the way and I haven’t had a chance to write until just now.

Like I just mentioned (and the only true excuse listed above), I am running the NYC Half Marathon this Sunday.  It will be my first race of 2014, and though I’m excited, I’m also as nervous as a potato chip on Super Bowl Sunday. Here’s the problem: I’ve been training all winter, but unless they move the course from lower and midtown Manhattan to a treadmill, I’m seriously screwed.  Since the New Year I believe I’ve run outside a total of 5 times, and 2 of them were this past weekend.  I’m sorry, but I am either too old or too smart to run outside when it’s 10 degrees or icy, and those have been my only two choices this entire winter. 

I’ve done most of my training runs – when I could get to my gym in the City and didn’t have to stay home with the kids on ANOTHER snow day – but treadmill running just isn’t the same thing.  This was proven to me on Saturday when I did an 8 mile run and I thought I was going to keel over and die for most of it.  Then Sunday I did a 4 mile run outside, which I think took twice as long as my run the day before because I had to stop so many times just to give myself a second or two to remember how to breathe.

So, here I am with 5 days before the half marathon and I am just not ready.  So, what to do?  Drop out?  Invent time travel so that I can go back to January (in southern California) and train outside like I really needed to?  Well, for me neither of those is an option (though the time travel thing would be really cool).  We all know I don’t give up without a fight.  So, I’ll start the race.  And we all know that I don’t quit.  So, I’ll finish the race.   Whatever happens in between will be as much a surprise to you as it will be to me.  This race won’t be my best, and it may be my worst.  But I’ve done my best with what I’ve had, and that’s what I’m going to leave on the race course this weekend.

My 1st NYC 1/2 Marathon, 2010

This Saturday the temperature is supposed to be in the mid-50s, perfect running weather.  Unfortunately, the race is on Sunday when temps will max out in the high 30s.  It’s not ideal (or even OK), but it is what it is.  Like I said before, this is my first race of the year, meaning that there are several more lined up behind it.  This race may be awful, but I trained smart which has kept me healthy and ready to tackle the rest of the ones on my schedule.  Eventually Mother Nature will stop her bi-polar tendencies and the weather will warm up and stay there (unlike this Wednesday and Thursday when the high is supposed to be 62 on one day and 28 on the next).  I’ll be able to train outside and I’ll be better prepared for races that take place – outside.

Hopefully next week my blog will be a write up of a great half marathon.  And if nothing else, at least it will be a write up of a race run entirely out of doors and not on a conveyer belt.  And it will definitely be a write up of my best race so far this year :-).  And if I really crap out and completely fail, next week's blog may be about the sweaters I'll be knitting for those hairless puppies...