We’re almost there – Fred Lebow Half

Now, we are a few days from the Fred Lebow Half Marathon, but I’m not feeling super confident about this half marathon. That said, this will be the 1st of (hopefully) 12 half marathons for 2020 . . . more on that for Thursday’s post. I’m pretty much going to use this half marathon as a baseline for my future half and full marathons in 2020. This means that I’m not looking for a PB (or even getting close to a PB). I’ll try to run the whole thing, but I will not beat myself up if have to walk for a bit. There will be some rolling hills with this one so we’ll see how that it goes. 

Interesting: Word on the street is that NYRR had to modify the course due to construction in Central Park. So far NYRR has not made an announcement; I learned about this change from my NYC Marathon 2019 Facebook group. 

Elevation for the original course: 

Elevation for the new course: 

I’m a bit surprised NYRR has not officially mentioned the course change, maybe they are planning to email runners later this week. 

Training week in review: 

Because of the struggles that I experience from last week’s Joe Kleinerman 10K (***), I kind of took last week pretty easy in terms of training. I did not want to further aggravate my back so I focused a bit more on stretching. Also, I have been actively trying to avoid slouching at home and in the office and stretch every night before going to sleep. 

On Saturday, I did do a longish run. Although I wanted to run 11 miles, I squeaked out only 9.5 miles. How crazy was the weather on the east coast this past weekend? Really, 65F in NYC during the second week in January?!!! Craaaaaazy. I had a nice run that took me from Harlem to Randell’s Island, Astoria, the Upper East Side, and Central.

Overall, the run was just ok. My back was a bit problematic during the first two miles of the run, but the pain disappeared after the second mile. Maybe, this is a sign that my back is getting better . . . slowly. With last week’s 10K, I had issues with my back for the entire duration of the race. I guess my longish run confirmed that I should spend more time warming up. Maybe I need to do an easy jog (~1 mile) with before my future races or just go into a race (10K and higher) knowing that I will have to take it easy during the first mile. 

 I wanted to do a quick loop in the lower part of Central Park so I could hit 11 miles, but there were just waaaay too many people in the park for my liking. This longish run was also an errand run because it gave me the opportunity to pick of my race bib and swag for this weekend’s half marathon. 

Happy running.

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