NYC Marathon Race Report - the numbers

For some reason, it always takes me a while to post about a marathon. Part of it is just that the energy available for extracurricular activities is low. Energy aside though, it's not as easy for me to write up a marathon as it is a 10k or other shorter race.

I think the main obstacle is that there is so much that happens on marathon day, that it's hard to boil it down to a post that captures the essence of the day. Other bloggers have attacked this problem by posting shorter, targeted entries, so I'll give that a try. Here is the short, cold, hard race report:

My goal was to beat my PR of 3:20:06, which I set at Boston in April. I felt in shape to do it, at least by a little, but NYC is a different course. I decided to go with the theory that NYC is an easier course.

My average pace in Boston was 7:38, so I was looking to start at 7:25-7:30. This seemed like it wouldn't be going out too fast, but give me some room to fade at the end.

I stuck to the plan pretty darn well, but by the time I hit mile 20, I was really feeling it. I had to dig really deep for the entire last 10k. My pace slipped quite a bit, but I kept it together and never completely crashed. In the end, I finished 31 seconds slower that in Boston -- 3:20:37. It's unfortunate that I couldn't keep pace enough for a PR, but I'm proud of myself for hanging in for a solid time.

My Garmin was not much use (a story for another post), so the best numbers I have are the splits published by the NYRR. They clocked me at every 5K, and I did the math to get an average pace for each split. A marathon is 42.1 kilometers, so the last entry is for 2.1k.

Interval	Pace
0-5k	7:29
10k-15k	7:19
15k-20k	7:25
20k-25k	7:23
25k-30k	7:31
30k-35k	7:58
35k-40k	8:08
last 2.1k	8:23