2010 New York City Marathon

This picture was taken near the starting line of New York City Marathon on November 17, 2010.

The time was probably around 7AM.  I had not been this thin for many years, at that time, I was under 160 lb at 5'9", not exactly endurance athlete skinny, but still relatively fit by my standard. Having said that, 160 lb at my age is very different from a 160 lb college student in the manner of weight distribution. Someone told me it's unlawful for a woman to walk around topless on certain Italian beaches -- if she is over the age of 30. I hope that's just a joke, I'm afraid worse can be said about middle aged men.

This was my very first marathon, I thought I had set a conservative target time of 4:10 (9:10 pace) but ended up with 4:31 instead. Sadly, I made all the rookie mistakes: running the 1st 18 miles ahead of my pace and hit the wall around mile 20; wearing a brand new pair of running shoes (which I had been saving for the occasion)... It's insane because I was well aware of these things.

At the half way mark, net time was about 2:02 and it felt too slow

Anyway,  I won't sign up for another marathon unless I have high confidence in finishing within 4 hours. I want to run faster, running slow sucks, running long and slow sucks worse.

I've been reading Gordon Pirie's Running Fast and Injury Free, easier said than done. (This book is freely available on the Net. For non-runners, the story of how the manuscript was recovered from a folded floppy disk is a good read.)