Sunday, March 1, 2009

Change of Plans: Sunday Long Run instead of Race Report

Today was supposed to be my second race in in as many weekends, the E. Murray Todd Half Marathon in Lincroft, NJ. A major snow storm is predicted for tonight (Sunday) into Monday morning in the NY Metro area. Ahead of the storm , the weather people were predicting a mix of snow/sleet/rain on Sunday morning. As I was getting ready there were some light flurries falling but nothing significant. I called the weather cancellation hotline before I left the house, and there was nothing about the race being canceled due to weather. So I get in the car and start driving down the Garden State Parkway towards the race. Around 7:20 I decided to call the hotline again just to make sure the race is still on. Lo and behold the race has been canceled. At this point I've been in the car for 40 minutes so I was pretty annoyed. I got off at the next exit, got back on the Parkway North and headed towards home.

I needed to get miles in anyway so I drove to the friendly confines of Saddle River Park. The 1/2 marathon was only providing water so I decided to bring my hydration belt with one bottle (20 oz.) of Gatorade and a GU packet. Since I was supposed to run 13.1 miles anyway, I decided that was distance I was going to cover. During the run, I tried to heed Brad's advice from Wednesday Night to run easy. I paid more attention to how I felt and not to the pace. Some of my splits was faster than others, but I didn't feel like I was running all out. All in all, I covered 13.13 miles in 1:48:36 for an 8:16/pace. Splits and other run details can be found here 13.1 in Saddle River Park

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