In 2005, I ran my first and (so far) only marathon, the New York City Marathon. It was a total disaster. I was undertrained and suffered serious gastrointestinal issues on the course. I finished in an extremely disappointing five hours and forty five minutes. Now, as I am deep into the training for my next marathon, the Vermont City Marathon (VCM) on May 30^th, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit what happened in the lead up to and on the day of the New York.

Today I am going to focus on what went wrong with my training for New York. To put it bluntly, I didn’t put in the time. When I was training for New York, I was also working full time, finishing college and studying for the LSAT. I was beyond over extended and I missed many weekday runs and a couple of long runs. My running logs from those days is pretty spotty, but it seems that my biggest mileage week was 24 miles, which included one four mile mid week run and a weekend twenty miler. That is just unacceptable. It is insane that I ran that race so unprepared, when it was over, I promised myself that I would always respect the race in the future, and that is part of the reason why I have not raced the marathon distance since.

In addition to the lack of training, I did not think through what my nutrition needs were going to be on my long runs. I was trying a different gel every week and was not facing up to the fact that they were all making me feel nauseous. It is hard to admit this, because I like to think of myself as a person who is serious and comes prepared, but I just didn’t respect the race, I didn’t take the training seriously, and I paid for it on race day.

This time around, I am taking things more seriously. Since I have started training for VCM, I have been running seven days a week, (six of those I consider as training runs and one of them is a recovery run which I do mainly to keep my running streak alive). I have not missed a single run, and I have only cut one run short since I started seriously training a month and a half ago (I cut a three miler down to a mile. Freezing rain was coming down and I was in shorts and a t-shirt, like an idiot).  So far, my biggest week was last week at 33 miles and my biggest planned week is 42 miles. I’d like to have more time, and be able to put in more miles (and maybe even some speed work) but I think that this is a reasonable beginner program and I think I’ll toe the line prepared to break five hours.

Additionally, I feel like I really have my nutrition locked down now. I realize that my body just can’t handle gels, so I have switch to cliff shot blocks, and they’re working great. No nausea and, so far, they have provided plenty in the way of energy.

While New York in 2005 was a pretty painful experience, I learned from it, and I am not making the mistake I made then again. I am going to get the miles in come hell or high water and I am going to have variables such as nutrition and hydration locked down well before I get to the starting line. This time, I am respecting the race and this time, I am going to make myself proud.