I was on vacation in New York City last month, and, true to my nature, I found a race to run out in Brooklyn – the Brooklyn Marathon & Half Marathon! This race used to take place solely around Prospect Park (a location I’d actually run before while visiting my friend D several years back), but as of this year they’ve expanded the race outside the park down Ocean Parkway which runs straight south. Their goal is to expand the race and make it run through various Brooklyn neighbourhoods, but they need the race to grow in size before they can move forward with their plans. I, for one, was really happy not to be doing loops around Prospect Park as repeating a course 10 times over can be quite monotonous!

Anyway, backing up a little bit. I had trained adequately for this race and I felt pretty good. I think I had potentially over-hydrated the night before though because I was literally up every 45-60 minutes to pee during the night. No joke. I went to bed at midnight and peed at LEAST every hour until 5 am when I got up to eat breakfast (plain oatmeal with milk) two hours before the race start time. Oddly, I felt quite good despite extremely disrupted sleep (I generally do well with sleep interruptions, but 5-6 times in a five hour period is a LOT). Anyway, after eating, I snoozed for about another hour until I got up, got dressed and ordered myself an Uber out to the start zone. I was fairly scared I wasn’t going to make it to the start zone in time since I was staying with my friend in Manhattan and the Uber seemed to be running late, but thankfully we made it in time.

I started off this race like a bat out of hell. I was moving so, SO fast for about 10 kilometers or so and I couldn’t figure out WHY. Everything just felt good, you know? The race itself starts off with a short loop around part of Prospect Park and then goes straight, STRAIGHT down Ocean Parkway for what feels like ages. It wasn’t until we got to the switchback at the end of Ocean Parkway that I realized why I was moving so fast… up till that point, the whole race had been on a gradual decline so I was partially being propelled forwards by gravity. Oh noooooo! When I clued into this, I then realized the next problem: the rest of the race was about to be uphill. Not SEVERELY uphill, but enough to be quite draining over time.

Running through Prospect Park is fantastic – when we hit it again after our looooong loop down Ocean Parkway it was like a breath of fresh air and I felt *alive* again. That change in scenery was massive for me – I needed that stimulus because the 10-12k we spent running down Ocean Parkway was extremely boring. Not only that, but to get off the parkway you have to run UP the on ramp and it was fairly steep. I realize they’re trying to expand the race outside of the park and I LOVE that they’re doing that, but this massive length of the same road twice over (because of the switchback) was intensely monotonous. So when we got back up to the park, I felt renewed and refresh – the greenery literally brought me back to life.

That was… until we hit the uphill portion in Prospect Park that spans more than a kilometer. The uphills in this race are no joke and they’re extremely draining. While the half marathoners only had to do those uphills once, the people running the full marathon will have to repeat that Prospect Park uphill five times over. I felt really, really awful for them because it’s such a long uphill segment that it’s actually fairly painful (my feet were burning by the end of it).

Anyway, despite the course not being my favourite, there are a lot of things I loved about this race. Let’s dive into that!

• There’s way more bathrooms than I’ve ever seen at a start zone. Literally dozens of port-a-potties set up. This is so necessary for a run and yet you almost never see enough.
• The volunteers were freaking READY for you. There was tons of water and Gatorade at each station and they always had their hands out with cups.
• There was a man keenly checking race bibs to make sure that the marathoners switched up the track sooner than half marathoners. Kudos to him because when you’re running your mind is pretty dead to the world and I’m sure people would’ve missed their turn off had he not been there grabbing people and telling them where to turn.
• There was a surprising number of people cheering on the racers despite this having a 7 am start time!
• The expo to pick up your race kit was quick and efficient. I was able to buy cheap gels there for the run which saved me some time. (There weren’t any on this course, and they told me it’s just because they weren’t big enough yet and didn’t reach out to any of the big brands.)
• The medal is ENORMOUS and gorgeous.
• Likewise, the t-shirt is gorgeous too! Great quality!
• Race pictures are free! I got all of the shots above from their web site and that’s a huge touch that I always appreciate.
• They gave us the silver foil blankets at the end AND toques! I was so cold after I finished the race (long cardio exertion drains my body of warmth) and I was so thankful to be able to put a hat on with my foil blankie.
• There was tons of food at the end of the race. I got a New York bagel (I could’ve cried with relief) and slathered it with cream cheese, stuffed a banana in my face, and had water and gatorade. There was more than that available, but that was plenty for me once I’d finished!

While the course wasn’t my most favourite I’ve ever run, it must be said that the organization of the race was topnotch. I love that they’re expanding outside the park now, and I can’t wait to see where the race takes them next year.

Oh yeah! And my finish time? Not that great, it’s a long shot from my 2:01 earlier this year, but it’s still much better than the 2:08 and 2:09s I’ve been doing in the last few years! Regardless of my speed, I was happy to take part in the race. 🙂

Race Results

• Finish Time: 2:07:22
• Pace: 6:02 per kilometer
• Overall placement: 1973/3808
• Age group placement (Female 35-39 years): 81/251

In a burst of annoyance with myself over a stupid soccer injury, I decided to sign up for the Toronto Half Marathon. At the time of me signing up it was March and I was like “oh please May is AGES away – I’ve got plenty of time to train!”. When I finally sat down and did my workback training schedule, I came to the horrifying realization that I had less than 6 weeks to train for this half marathon AND I had a shoulder injury. Hooo boy.

I basically dove headfirst into training after my last race (the Achilles St. Patrick’s Day 5K) and told myself there was no room for me to be lazy this time. Aside from the first half marathon I ever did (in the Czech Republic – read all about that race here!), I’ve been basically lazy AF about my half marathon training. I’ll train for one week, off for another, repeat. And while it WORKS, and I CAN run a half marathon without having to put much effort into training, the fact remains that I haven’t really sped up or gotten any better over the years I’ve been doing these races. My half marathon times range from two hours and seven minutes to two hours and eight minutes, without very much variation. And honestly, it’s the result of lazy training. Fundamentally you’re supposed to be running something like 5 times a week, but in the past I’ve generally relied on running twice a week. It doesn’t help that I play soccer, weightlift and recently went back to figure skating, so there’s a lot on my plate physically which gets in the way of training. That being said, all of these activities do HELP in some way, so they’re not totally detrimental.

The time around I was actually scared. I had a shoulder injury (that was healing well mind you) and I had very little time to get prepped for this race. So, for the first time in a long time, on top of all of my other activities, I committed to running three days a week, with the shortest single run in a week being around 9 kilometers. I was clocking around 35-40 kilometers a week and that’s easily the most I have ever done to train for a half. I love running long distance, but that much running training is super boring to me. However, the fear of failure kept me going and I completed all of the pre-race runs I set out to do… with one exception. I skipped my last long run the week before the race (a 16k run) and turned my usual one week taper (where you reduce your distance dramatically before a race in order to rest your muscles ) into a two week one. I had read in the past that a two week taper is sometimes better and I figured… let’s give it a shot.

I don’t know if it was all the consistent training, or the two week taper, or the extra physical activity I do… but I absolutely nailed this race. Every single time I looked down at my Garmin to check my pace I was in shock. I kept asking myself how was I running this fast? I was putting out a pace that I generally have during a 10K race and I wasn’t even tired. I wasn’t out of breath and I felt AMAZING. I kept expecting to hit a wall but 5k passed without issue, then 10k (I actually felt the best around 10k), then 15k…. and I still felt indestructible.

There was a brief moment around 18 kilometers where I looked at my Garmin and was like “wait a second, you’re not only going to absolutely MURDER your previous personal record, but you might actually be super close to two hours!”. It’s been my dream to get under two hours, but I’ve honestly never really had much motivation to work on speed training.

In the end, I tore through the finish line with a time of 2:01:20. This finish time was an incredible 5:49 minutes FASTER than my previous personal best which is absolutely unheard of for me. I usually go up and down by about a minute, never before I have I chopped off so much time in a race! While I must concede that a lot of the race had downhill segments, I have to say that there were some horrific uphills that sucked the absolute life out of you, so I really feel like they counterbalanced themselves. Plus, I not only beat the average female completion time (which was somewhere around 2:14:00) but I also beat the MALE average completion time (2:02:03)!

So if you couldn’t tell… I am over the moon about this race!

Race Results

• Finish Time: 2:01:20
• Pace: 5:45 per kilometer
• Overall placement: 1355/2956
• Age group placement (Female 30-39 years): 67/212
• Gender placement (F): 459/1392