College Point to Burlington

This week I had an ITB problem that I thought would be the ruin of me at the Queens Half. Instead, what it did was essentially force me into a taper, reducing mileage so as to not aggravate the injury. Saturday at Queens, I had a huge PR. It was one of those races where I began to doubt the positions of the markers because my splits were looking too good. Without the pain in my hip, I'd have been shooting for a 1:33 net time, and that would've been optimistic. Instead, I finished at 1:31:35 net. This works out to be a 6:59 average pace. I had initially worried that I went out way too fast, as my first few miles were hitting a 6:45 pace, and my mid-miles started losing speed. However, somewhere I dug up the reserves to bring the last two in at a sub-7 minute pace again, so it would seem I was doing something right. Plus I didn't fall on my face like at Brooklyn. Not falling on your face is always a good thing.

As for the Queens course, which I hadn't done before, it had it's good and bad points. I really wonder how they chose it. I couldn't understand why we would go so far out just to run a double loop. You're slightly closer than Brooklyn, but at Brooklyn, the course ends roughly 6-7 miles from where it starts, and you can get a subway back from Prospect Park, instead of being tossed about on those nasty school buses. There are already so many double loop half marathons in Central Park (Grete's, Manhattan, More, etc.), and you'd think Queens is a large enough borough to not have to do a double loop. And I know for certain that there are some beautiful parts of the borough that actually don't have such a combination of very tacky (awful! awful!) houses and industrial/strip mall areas to run through. However, the waterfront and the views of the bridge were pleasant, and I enjoyed the setup of the finish area in MacNeil Park. One positive thing that I liked about the double loop was the staggering of mile markers, so when running one loop, the other loop's mile markers functioned as half-mile markers.

Anyway, Brooklyn is still my favourite course, but I can see a lot of faster times coming out of Queens, as the weather is more favourable and people are generally better trained at this point. I still haven't done Staten Island, and I'm cautiously optimistic about the sweltering inaugural NYC Half Marathon in August.

Today my ITB is causing me grief again. This is bad timing, to be sure. This coming week I should reach my peak mileage before I start tapering for Vermont, at the end of May. I'm hoping that with proper stretching and icing, I can get the miles in this week and start reducing the next, so that the ITB problem subsides and I can have a decent marathon, four weeks from today.

According to the charts, both online and off, and with course and weather conditions being similar, a 1:31:35 Half should translate into somewhere between a 3:15 to 3:20 Marathon. So I am indeed on track for a 3:20 at Vermont, and a more distant goal of a 3:15 at Chicago, which would qualify me for Boston. Of course, I can't control the weather (or so I'll have everyone believe, anyway), so if a monsoon hits Burlington, or we have sweltering weather like New York has had during the last three years, I'll just be happy if I can beat my NYC PR of 3:32. By all accounts so far, the course is reportedly easier than NYC.