Month: November 2024

Map Your Run

You probably know your own neighborhood or neck of the woods pretty well. But you need to branch out and explore. It can add some excitement and newness to your running.

And if you’re training for a race, you should exercise specificity. Some examples of specificity:

  • If you’re running a race with some hills, you should incorporate hilly routes in your training.
  • If you’re signed up for a race in the cold of winter, you should train in the cold.
  • If you’re running a race in the heat of the summer, you should train in the heat.
  • If you’re runnig a race at altitude, you should (try to) train at altitude.

Shortly after I started running, I lucked out and landed a job at MapMyFitness right as it was being acquired by Under Armour (and has since been acquired by Outside). My friend Kevin Callahan built MapMyRun specifically so runners could map a route before heading out on a run. I used the MapMyRun mobile app when I started running because I wanted to track my runs. I was interested in keeping track of my time, distance, and pace and I didn’t yet own a GPS running watch. After using the app and website for a few days, I quickly fell in love with its route creation tool. And I still use it to this day, 11+ years later.

Using MapMyRuns web interface in very intuitive. You simply “draw” your route by placing the curser where you want to start and click your mouse button. Then click another point further down the street and the site will follow the street and connect the dots. Keep “connecting the dots” until you have the route and distance that you want. The mapping feature will automatically update the distance as your create your route so you’ll know exactly how far your route is.

MapMyRun is free and so is the route creation tool. You will need to create an account with an email address and password.

While MapMyRun is easy to use and does what it does really well, it lacks turn-by-turn directions. Enter RunGo.

RunGo’s route creation tool is very similar to MapMyRun’s, but in my opinion a little clunkier and takes a little more precision to create a route. RunGo is also free(mium). I’m not sure of the details, but I think RunGo will only allow you to save a set number of routes per week or month, otherwise you’ll need a paid subscription. Unless you’re using it to create a route a day, seven days a week, I think you’ll be fine. I usually use RunGo once a week to plan my Sunday long run.

And that leads me to why I like RunGo and its turn-by-turn directions on its mobile app. When I was training for this year’s TCS NYC Marathon, I purposely designed my training plan to incorporate hilly routes for my Sunday long runs. I did the majority of my training in my hometown of Austin, and while Austin is a hilly city, there are areas and neighborhoods that are really hilly. I wanted to train in those parts of town. But I’m not as familiar with those parts of the city, so I created my routes using RunGo’s website, saved them to my account, and then when it was time to go on my hilly long run on Sunday, I opened my route on my phone, hit the ‘Start Route’ button on the app, and started running.

The RunGo voice assistant will speak through your phone’s speaker or headphones to tell you: “Turn left on Balcones Drive in 300 feet” so you have a heads up that a turn is coming up. And she’ll speak again when you need to turn: “Turn left on Balcones Drive.” And the RunGo assistant will chime in while you’re listening to music, audiobooks, or podcasts using another app or platform. So you don’t have to think or worry about missing a turn or getting lost; you can just run and let RunGo tell you when and where to turn.

Taking a little bit of time to plan and map your run routes will make your running and training a lot easier. I’m sure there are a lot of other run route mapping solutions, but I’ve been very pleased with both MapMyRun and RunGo.

Recap of the 2024 TCS NYC Marathon

Would I run the NYC Marathon again? Probably not. For me, it’s a one and done. I’ve now raced the largest marathon in the world in the most populous city in the US. If the family really wants to go back to NYC the first week of November then yeah, I’d run it again.

Just like I’d mentioned in my conversation with my friend at the Sox game last year, the Marathon World Majors marathons are expensive. And they’re in expensive cities that require travel, accommodations, and a lot of eating. And then there’s the logistics. And the crowds. And the noise. And the waiting. Everything’s expensive in Manhattan, especially if you’re a proud tourist. The logistics of many races can be stressful, but NYC’s is extra special. You’ll get a lot of emails, so I’ll give the NYRR that. They communicate very well and often, and I think a lot of races could take a page from that book. I woke up at 3:00 a.m. on Sunday so I could be out the door by 4:00 a.m. to be in line for a bus at 4:30 a.m. so it could leave at 5:00 a.m. to get us to Staten Island at 5:45 a.m. where the first wave and corral went off at 9:10 a.m. I probably could’ve chosen later transportation to the start, but I didn’t know what I was doing. This is the first time I ran the NYC Marathon and there are extra logistics, like picking a bus or a boat to the start, and what time you’d like to get on that bus or boat.

Again, I’m not partial to fan support. I get it, and I appreciate it, but it starts to drone, and drain, and wear on me within a few short miles. It’s very loud for many hours. That’s not stimulating to me. And the field is huge. I’ve never run shoulder to shoulder with somebody for an entire 26 miles. The NYC course has a lot of turns and I’ll be damned if I didn’t have to watch my footing on every single one of those turns the entire race.

To me, it’s just too big, loud, and expensive. Admittedly, I have no real roots in New York (that I know of). Other than having been there a few times many years ago for a job, I have no familial or otherwise connections to the city.

Now, the race itself.
I think I really lucked out at NYC. It wound up being a great day for me. Everything lined up sans a little hip niggling that put me out for a few days in one of my later training cycles. The weather was perfect (upper 40’s at the 9:10 a.m. start). The course and crowds are entertaining. It’s a good course to train for because there are the famed bridges that provide the elevation gain, and there’s also that 5th Ave. climb. I’d heard about it, but I wish I would’ve heeded warnings. It’s the climb (it’s not even a hill) that finally punctured my rib cage and went straight for the heart. That climb zapped me and I have no idea how I managed the “rollers” in the park before finishing.

I went into the race respecting it. It requires strategy if you’ve a goal time you want to hit. I designed and executed my entire training cycle with that strategy in mind. Hard and hilly efforts in tempos and at the end of long runs. Strenth training. Specific interval workouts to build speed, bounce, and VO2 Max. I decreased intensity and slowly added volume. Hills to build strength and form.

My goal was to run the TCS NYC Marathon in 3 hours and 10 minutes, which would be a Boston Qualifying time for my age group with a 10 minute buffer. A friend asked me what my goal was for the race, and I gave her that number. She said, “I’ll pray for a 3:09:30 for you!” And then, well, I felt obligated to help answer a prayer. So the arbitrary goal became 3:09:30.

Stay steady at a 7:10 – 7:15 pace. Honest check in as you’re crossing the Pulaski Bridge going into Queens at about the halfway mark. If you feel good, stay there. If you don’t feel good, figure out how to run 13 more miles. Check in at mile 16 coming off the Queensboro into Manhattan. If you feel good, drop the pace. Ten miles to go. Find a comfortably faster rhythm and settle in to whatever that is and leverage the strength you’ve built up these past 4 months.

I like that graphic above because it visually shows exactly how I prepared and executed my plan. I ran the second half faster than the first. However, that mile-long climb up 5th Ave. took it out of me. I’d say that was one glaring mistake I made. When 5th started curving up, I should’ve backed down to rate of perceived exertion (RPE). I was (trying) maintaining pace. That caught up to me after a nice downhill right after we entered the park.

The bridges: nothing. I trained, if not overtrained, on the hills. I made every run hilly. I focused on the wall. Which, for me, can be anywhere between miles 16-23. I made the long runs hilly in the second half. I did MGP pick-ups in the later miles of long runs. I made my long runs longer.

The results.

I ran a 3:04:04. So a good 5 minutes faster than my goal time. I attribute that to the negative split. Which was really my burning goal. Everyone said that people don’t run a negative split (which is where you run the second half of the marathon faster than the first half) at NYC so I had to prove them wrong. I dropped the hammer right at mile 16 and settled into a cadence that felt good at that stage of the race. In my head, the 10 miles ahead of me was nothing. An easy Sunday morning run. I felt very confident and good at that point. I started running negative mile splits until I got to maybe a third of the way up the 5th Ave. climb. I was already 25 miles in, so while I was dogging it to do it, I was staying just ahead of my own personal struggle bus, which probably would’ve had us jog-hobble-walking it in.

The end really is pretty tough and tricky. It’s hard to gauge exactly what’s left in the tank, and when’s the right time to empty it. I think I emptied mine somewhere on mile 25. There’s another little climb when you hook a right onto Central Park Ave that greets you like a fat middle finger. And then you turn into the park again, and have to climb to the finish line. It’s not but 10 feet or so, but at that point in the race it feels like mountain that can go to hell and die.

Crossed the finish line, stopped my watch, did a quick head-to-toe body scan, and kept walking. I was fine. No injuries or anything hurting that I could make out just yet. I surprisingly didn’t stiffen or lock up. I felt great, so I just started passing everyone else in my saunter to get my medal, recovery bag, and poncho. Man was I hungry. I almost said, “to hell with the medal, give me a bunch of bags of that food!” I slammed the Gatorate, and ate the Maurten bar in two bites. Ate the apple in probably the same amount of bites. Slowed down a bit and started nibbling on pretzels and drinking water. Everyone else was dead-leg zombie walking. I didn’t feel like I just ran a marathon.

Met up with the family in the “J” section. BAA take note: NYC’s family reunion system is better. We walked the twoish miles back to our condo. I took a quick shower and changed, and then we were out again, walking the streets of Midtown East to eat some big, fat, delicious Reuben sandwiches and pickles at P.J. Clarke’s.

Very easily my best marathon from a planning and execution perspective. This wasn’t a PR day, nor do I think it could’ve. But I’m very happy and thankful for how the day played out for me. I controlled everything that I could control, and the course and conditions were kind and generous to me that November 3rd morning.

My official NYRR results are here. Strava is here:

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