TCS New York City Marathon

Background: In 2019 & 2020, I ran 3,600 km/year. Did a combination of speed work, tempo and long runs and was in complete touch with the sport. Fast-forward to 2021 - I ran a meagre 500 km all of 2021, literally no miles from Apr 2021. 2021 was the worse year in terms of training in the 9 years I have been running! I wanted to change this in 2022.

First half 2022: Like many others, we tried our best to stay away from Covid-19 all of 2020 & 2021, but the virus got to us beginning of 2022. Annoyingly, I spent the first week of the year recovering from it. Whilst we had a mild infection, the gap in fitness did take a toll on my body due to general lack in aerobic fitness, the virus aftermath and maybe age catching up. I had to start somewhere, decided to walk first for a few weeks and then added some walk-run combination to my routine. I had a deferred entry from 2020 to the 2022 Bengaluru TCS 10K edition for the heck of it. Spent 4-5 weeks getting some miles, trained enough to go finish the event. I continued to chip away 25-40 km per week thereafter comprising of very easy runs purely to a) keep in touch with the sport b) improve aerobic fitness. End of Q2, I wrote to the charity partner whom I had done some fundraising for NYC Marathon in 2020, I had left the fundraising effort midway as the event didn't happen in 2020 & in 2021 the field size was largely reduced due to Covid. The charity partner obliged with a spot for the 2022 TCS New York Marathon to be held on Nov 6. 

Training and build up to the event: With 3-4 months to the event. I grabbed the 16 weeks, off-the-shelf Marathon training plan on Garmin and told myself to try and stick to and complete 80% of the workout. To be fair, I missed just 1 week of training block, was by-and-large hitting the weekly miles albeit most of the running was easy runs. With a friend's divine intervention in my training plan, I managed to get a little speed work and long slow runs of 20-22 miles in, also practice fueling and hydration. The training block got me to a mileage of 700 km - which by any means wasn't a license for any bravado in the race.

Weeks building up to the race: I ran a half marathon in training the week before the event, was feeling strong and confident I'd complete the Marathon on Nov 6. I left on Wed, Nov 2 morning, after a long and tiring Trans-Atlantic flight to Newark, NJ I was on the other side only to be welcome by unusually warm and humid East coast weather. Dr. Avinash & Dr. Geeta Gupta hosted me at their home in NJ and extended their hospitality. I had some delicious Bihar/Jharkhand food at their place and mostly rested and recovered from Jetlag (the worse jetlag I have had traveling to the US). On Friday morning after praying at the Siddhivinayak Temple at Toms River, NJ I went to Sridhar Rao's place for the weekend.

48 hours to the race: Friday afternoon, Sridhar Rao and I went to the running Expo to pick up the race number at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. We were in and out of the expo in 20 minutes. The usual drill, get the race bib, take pictures, try on the event T-shirt. Shubha Rao made sure I got food, snacks and drinks on time. Sridhar literally baby'ed me with hydration, electrolyte drinks and what not. On Saturday, I did a shakeout run in West Windsor, NJ - the weather was really hot and humid, actually, I felt exhausted, dehydrated and jetlagged. I felt I was catching a cold/flu, an afternoon nap fixed me though. I had Pasta for dinner and tried to get to bed at 7:30 pm with a tab of Melatonin.

Race morning: 3:45 am alarm! (not that one needs an alarm to wake up on the race day), I had an hour to get showered and ready. At 4:45 am, Sridhar and I left home to Princeton Junction to get the 5:15 am train to Penn Station, NYC. Sridhar Rao snatched away from phone, so I could feel rested and not get distracted looking at WhatsApp. After an hour later, we took a subway to Whitehall terminal to get on the ferry to Staten Island. The subway was packed with runners from around the world at stupid-o-clock. Sridhar handed back my phone, ensured I got on the ferry and went back home. I along with S Mistri, a friend I made in the train ride to Penn Station boarded the ferry and chit chatted through the ferry ride and then a 15 minutes bus ride to the 'holding area', the Race village the NYRR organizers call it.  Dunkin had stalls for free bagel and coffee for all runners. I had taken couple of slices of bread which I ate at 9:00 am and then headed to my Corral and waited for my wave start at 10:20 am. In the meantime, the weather was like India, warm & humid. My preference is to run in 8-10c temperature, but it wasn't happening that morning. At 10:21 am I was on the move, NYC Marathon welcomes you with a never ending climb of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and into Brooklyn, my Garmin in the meantime decided to start acting up. The GPS was messed up and my watch was showing all kind of paces. I stopped relying on the watch and decided to focus on the 5 km timing mats on the course to keep an eye on the pace. The plan was to not go faster than 6:37-6:40/km until the half-way mark. The marathon doesn't disappoint up with the placement of bridges, as soon as you start to get into a nice rhythm, a bridge gets thrown at you. Right at the half way mark, the Pulaski Bridge gets you into Queens. Mile 13-20 is crucial in any marathon, I continued to maintain pace, I knew I was slowing down during uphills but was overall doing okay. After 20 miles - the average pace started to drop and the weather wasn't helping either. The goal hereon was keep chipping away miles to the finish. After a few miles in Bronx, the route gets you into Central Park, Manhattan where the course is rolling again. I felt very emotional as I finished the race cautiously running through the 5 Boroughs of NYC. My race splits and other details are here should you be interested. After the race is over, I collected the medal and went through Central Park to eventually exit out of it and to meet Sridhar Rao again who was waiting for me with refreshments and change of clothes. We took a subway to Penn Station and back to NJ feeling happy, tired, accomplished.

Gratitude and closing comments

As they say, it takes a village for someone to run a marathon. I owe this one to a lot of people. Rashmi, my wife, my kids who always support me in whatever I want to do, Sridhar & Shubha for hosting me during the race weekend, my runner friends, Ranjini, Gautham, Suresh, RVS, Bharath & Col Krishna and all the donors who donated to my fundraiser. With this race, I finish 3 (Chicago, Berlin & NYC) out of the 6 World Marathon Majors with 3 more (Tokyo, London & Boston) to go.