New York Half Marathon 2014

The morning of Sunday 16th of March saw me wake up bright and breezy at 4.30 am for the trip from Stamford, Connecticut into Manhatton for a 7.30 am start in Central Park at the massive New York City Half Marathon.

I am fortunate to have friends in the States and do try to nip over fairly regularly and have tied my holiday in with running the Boston and New York Marathons, as well as the New Haven 20k and one of Tina’s local running clubs races in the past. I always love seeing my 9 year old God-daughter Maggie and her 7 year old sister Fiona, hadn’t been over for a few years, so to say I was looking forward to it was an understatement.

The day before the race was spent at the expo, followed by the basketball at Madison square garden which was perfect prep, and after carbo loading at a nice Italian restaurant afterwards there was nothing left to do but see what the race would bring. I have a pain on my knee cap at the moment, and generally don’t think I am running great just now, but as I have a Championship start at the London marathon for the first time in 4 weeks I was looking for a benchmark to see where I am at.

Arriving at the park, temperatures were absolutely freezing so I abandoned my friends and tried to get a decent warm up. My race number meant that I was lucky enough to get a great start and lining up I was just behind the elites including Mo Farah and Gemma Steel from the UK before they were rude enough to run off and leave me when the gun went to start the race!

The first half of the race was up and down Central Park, pretty undulating, but at this point I was settling into a rhythm and had no issues with a huge amount of runners around me which was great in a field of over 20,000 athletes At around 2.5 miles we passed the lead group going in the opposite direction towards the 3 mile Mark, and to say they were flying was an understatement.

Leaving the park we ran past Times Square at around 10k, and as this is one of only twice in the year it is closed to traffic (New year being the other) it was pretty awesome. Although I was running okay as we ran towards the Hudson river, I definitely didn’t have too much spring in my legs, possibly due to fairly high mileage, but also probably due to a lack of races in the past few weeks. However, my knee was holding up and I was loving the run towards the end of the race near battery park so there were definitely positives.

With a mile to go, and passing the new Freedom Tower on the site of ground zero, everything is put into perspective and with an up and down through a tunnel I approached the finish line still in time for breakfast!

Running 1.18.33 was a bit down on what I hoped for if I’m honest, anyone who knows me also knows I can be a bit hard on myself, and for a few minutes the dummy was spat out of the pram. In no time at all though, positives were focussed on, my knee held up, I seemed to be fairly high up the field going by the surprisingly few people at the finishing area, and it was anything but a baddie.

Afterwards, George, Tina, and Tina’s friend Tracey met up and it was great to hear the tales of all the individual races while absolutely changing and looking for a heat.

Into Starbucks for a cuppa, we then headed into a cracking Irish Pub in Wall Street purely to be sociable and meet one of Tina’s friends. One thing led to another, and 11am watching the English Premiership turned into teatime and goodness knows how many pints of Guinness in between…….well, it was St Patrick’s weekend and would have been rude not to. We then headed for Grand Central and a bar for food, before jumping on the train back to Stamford where shockingly George had bought beer wrapped in a brown paper poke for the 40 minute trip.

Back home, I was amazed with the messages on Facebook, texts, and e-mails I had received, and even more surprised to find I had placed 176th overall and on the Awards list as 5th in my age category, so maybe, just maybe, not as disappointing as I first thought………