Give me the bad news first

It was only a mile more than last week, but today's 14 miles were brutal.

The conditions were ideal - it was a balmy 67 degrees when I started, and there were bits of rain here and there that felt like a refreshing Evian face spritz for the whole body.

I'd mapped out my course beforehand: 1 lap of the 6-mile loop, 1 lap of the 5-mile loop (bound on the north by the 102nd street traverse), 1 lap of the reservoir, and 1 lap of the 1.7-mile loop (bound on the north by the 72nd street traverse). I like the bad news first: give me the hardest and longest lap first so that everything thereafter feels easier.

Again, I made myself walk every 8th minute, and I can only imagine how much worse it would've been had I not done this. I ran exactly 14 miles in 2 h 41 min, for an average pace 11:32 min/mi. Not too bad considering that I walked 1/9 of the time!

Sunday must be most marathon trainers' long-run day. There were a lot of Fuel Belts out.

I didn't see too many characters out today. I saw the military guy - the big dude who is at every NYRR race, shirtless, with his army hat and cheers everyone on - and he said hi to me. I also saw the older glamorous woman who walks and wears the black veil across her mouth and nose. Speaking of walking, there was one race in the Park today - a racewalk that looked pretty intense.

One lesson that came to mind as I ran today's hard run - you can't judge the runners around you. In the Park, where there are tons of people running at the same time, it's so easy to judge whether or not you're better or worse, faster or slower. I was plugging along pretty slowly and didn't pass too many people, while I found myself moving out of people's way more often. There's no way to tell what another runner is doing - whether she's doing a long or short run, whether she's experienced or not, whether or not she's training for anything. So you have to run your own race plan or training run without paying attention to the next guy.

I think that's what this year's marathon is going to be for me. Chicago last year was all about crossing the finish line any way I could, even if it meant that I crawled across the finish. This year I want to finish on my terms - to execute a race plan I intended. If I walk during the New York marathon, I hope it'll be because I planned to - like in these long training runs - and not because I can't bring myself to keep running, as in Chicago.