...continued from previous post.
I arrived at the Hawker Sports Centre at 10:30am. The room quickly filled up with around 160 people attending. The introduction was given by 2:09 events director, and former London Marathon winner Mike Gratton. He gave an overview of the day, a lot of information about travel arrangements and hotels. 1400 people are travelling to New York with 2:09 this year! 400 people are staying at the Crown Plaza in Time Square, me and my gf included. Mike briefed us on the security measures. We can't take any liquids or gels of any kind on the plane. and so I'm sure we'll all be pestering the cabin crew for water for the whole flight.
Registration takes place in the Javit exibition centre in New York from Thursday to Saturday. He warned everyone about excessive shopping and walking on the Saturday. Very good advice I think.
Mike then handed over to Steve Smyth, a man with 600 marathons behind him, best time of 2:29 minutes!
Steve advised on how to train from now until race day. He advised trying to run as many Sunday long runs as close to 20 miles as possible, but no more than one every two weeks. He also placed a lot of emphasis on speed work. He suggested intervals and phartlek sessions twice a week, with perhaps an 8 mile marathon pace run in the week too. My training schedule looks like this already, but i'll tweak it slightly if needed. I won't be doing anymore long distance walks on Saturdays until after the marathon either, so I'll be running on Saturdays too. This will only leave me with Monday as a day off.
Next up was Pete Slater, director of Science in Sport nitrition. The talk was on nutrition, but Pete was really there to push SIS products, and I think it worked since I'll be ordering some. I already use their REGO Nocte nightime recovery drink now and again. I'll now order some REGO post training drinks and some bars and gels to see if they'll work for me. At the NY marathon they hand out Gatorade, and with no experience of using it, it's too much of a gamble. I'll try and get used to using gels and water only I think. Pete advised a light breakfast, some sports drink an hour or so before the run. Take a gel just before the start of the race, and then one every 30 minutes throughout. They handed out some samples to try. I'll give one a try in the week.
At 1pm we all jogged down to Richmond park at split into 4 training groups.
6-7 minute miles (about 3 people joined this group!)
8-9 Minute, 9-10 minute and a group for everyone else to run slower. Most people joined the 10 minute plus group, but still the two middle groups had a large turnout too.
The weather was hot, it was 26C. I thought I'd play safe and go in the 9-10 minute mile group. We all set off following our pacer. After a couple of miles I thought "This is too fast for 9-10 minute miles". We asked the pacer what his GPS said. He said 8:30 minute miles. He thought he was supposed to be running 8-9, not 9-10. We glanced behind and apart from a half dozen of us, the other 30 or so people were strung out for hundreds of yards.... oops..
Also, people had dropped back from the group in front of us, some were already walking. It turned out that the pacer for that group has run at 7:45 to 8 minute initially too.
Our pacer said he was going to slow down to the right pace, and it was up to us what pace we wanted to do. Me and another girl felt comfortable at 8:30 pace, so we carried on throughout. We passed a lot of people from the group in front who were walking. This was mainly becuase of the heat. Not all of them had been sensible and taken water along. I noticed how everyone really suffered on what they called hills. I slowed down for the girl I was running with up the hills. It was amazing how much pace people lost. These were just little gradients to me, not hills at all. I guess that's the benefit of training in a hilly area. We finished the 9.5 mile run, I'd say more or less at 8:30 pace. Over the next 40 mins everyone else finished and after lunch Mike Gratton closed the information day with a talk on the course itself.
All of the speakers had commented on the course being hilly. They reckoned that especially after 18 miles the whole course seemed uphill to the finish. That sounded a bit worrying, but I'm hoping their defintion of hills, and mine, and hills apart! Looking at the elevation profile diagram on the NY marathon website it does not look too steep. However, I know from experience elevation profile diagrams are not always that true-to-life. I guess i'll expect the worst and hope for the best. As long as I remember to take it steady up the hills and stride out on the downhills and flat, I'm sure I'll be ok. I really want to try and do 4 hours. I think that this is a really tall order for a first marathon given my running experience and background. It means me running 9 minute miles, if I slip to 9:11 minute miles I won't beat 4 hours.
I'm going to have to push the boat out in training for the next 8 weeks, but not injure myself.
I'm going to put a lot of effort into speed sessions, as recommended, but also try and get plenty of very long runs in on the Sundays.
I'll post a revised schedule for the next 2 months training later today.
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