When I first moved to New York in 2012, I added running the NYC marathon to my bucket list of things to do while I lived here. The longest race I’ve ever done was a 15km back in Manila before tearing my second ACL in 2011, so a 42km (26.2 mi) race seemed to be doable, but it would require a lot of work.
The first step I took was to sign up for a New York Road Runners membership so that I could join their races and complete the 9+1 requirement in 2013, which is to finish 9 runs and to volunteer for 1 event in one calendar year, to be eligible to run the NYC marathon for the next year.
I ran 9 races- some as short as the Fifth Avenue Mile, and the longest was a 15k race in Central Park in freezing temperatures. For the volunteering requirement, I spent an afternoon manning a booth at the NYC half 2013 expo.
This was the last run I had to do for the 9 race requirement, and I had no other choice but to run in the snowstorm. It was the Ted Corbitt 15K in Central Park on December 14, 2013, and the temperature was around 25 degrees F. I felt like my toes and fingers were going to fall off when I stopped running on my way back home.
I have 87 days until the marathon on November 2, and I’m using the NYRR Virtual Trainer program to get ready for the race. Today calls for an 8 mi run, my longest distance yet. I’ve set my training to the Moderate plan, which gives me a race pace of 13:00-13:12 per mile for now. So far, my knees have been cooperating and I haven’t had major knee pain since I started with this program. I hope it stays that way!
*EDIT*
I just changed my running plan to the Advanced version, just because I want to push myself a bit more. My first three weeks of training have been fairly easy, so after writing about it earlier, I felt like I should challenge myself.