I had been training for the past 6 months to run the Marine Corp Marathon 2014. I took part in it successfully today. More on that later.
As part of the marathon training program I ran two 1/2 marathons; one at the beginning of my training, in early May, and the other in September. I wrote about how I fared in my first one, in Delaware, here. I was disappointed with my time which was nearly 2 hours and 50 minutes! But poor results told me something, unequivocally. I was not ready.
The second race was at the tail end of our training in September and it was a local race sponsored by the club I run with The Montgomery County Road Runners Club or the MCRRC. It was the Parks Half Marathon.
The weather was cool and stayed cool the whole time. It started near Rockville metro and ended near Bethesda metro station, while traversing some of the most beautiful trails in Washington DC area. Our pace group coaches told us to run our best. This was in opposition to the advice given by the marathon coordinators! The coordinators wanted us to run at the slower pace we train in. They were afraid that we would suffer some injury or ailment that would prevent us from training to run a marathon. In their opinion that was the purpose of the rigorous training. On the other hand our coaches were of the opinion that running well would show us how far we had come in our training and motivate us to train better.
Omar, one of my two coaches, set the tone early by leaving me in the dust. Typically we run a tortoise-like 12 minute 30 second per mile pace. But as the course was mostly downhill during the first few miles, I found myself running at about 30-45 seconds faster than my usual pace. Around 4 miles I met up with Sri my brother-in-law who typically run at 12 minute per mile pace and we fell into a easy conversation. Sri recounted so many comic incidents during his travels that the time just flew. Around 10 mile mark we stepped up the pace even faster than the pace we were running. We were now running nearly 2 minutes faster than my typical pace. We both finished with a time of around 2 hours and 30 minutes. I personally shaved almost 20 minutes from our earlier pace, surely a result of the hard work I had put into this. I was happy! To see complete results click here (I am number 903).
As part of the marathon training program I ran two 1/2 marathons; one at the beginning of my training, in early May, and the other in September. I wrote about how I fared in my first one, in Delaware, here. I was disappointed with my time which was nearly 2 hours and 50 minutes! But poor results told me something, unequivocally. I was not ready.
The second race was at the tail end of our training in September and it was a local race sponsored by the club I run with The Montgomery County Road Runners Club or the MCRRC. It was the Parks Half Marathon.
The weather was cool and stayed cool the whole time. It started near Rockville metro and ended near Bethesda metro station, while traversing some of the most beautiful trails in Washington DC area. Our pace group coaches told us to run our best. This was in opposition to the advice given by the marathon coordinators! The coordinators wanted us to run at the slower pace we train in. They were afraid that we would suffer some injury or ailment that would prevent us from training to run a marathon. In their opinion that was the purpose of the rigorous training. On the other hand our coaches were of the opinion that running well would show us how far we had come in our training and motivate us to train better.
Omar, one of my two coaches, set the tone early by leaving me in the dust. Typically we run a tortoise-like 12 minute 30 second per mile pace. But as the course was mostly downhill during the first few miles, I found myself running at about 30-45 seconds faster than my usual pace. Around 4 miles I met up with Sri my brother-in-law who typically run at 12 minute per mile pace and we fell into a easy conversation. Sri recounted so many comic incidents during his travels that the time just flew. Around 10 mile mark we stepped up the pace even faster than the pace we were running. We were now running nearly 2 minutes faster than my typical pace. We both finished with a time of around 2 hours and 30 minutes. I personally shaved almost 20 minutes from our earlier pace, surely a result of the hard work I had put into this. I was happy! To see complete results click here (I am number 903).
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| Raag in the middle flanked by his coaches at the end of Parks Half |
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