NYC 2003 - My First Marathon
by Chris Lear

Over the next seven weeks, Chris Lear, a Colorado-based full-time sales representative and freelance writer, will be sharing his training diary as he prepares to run in this year's edition of the ING New York City Marathon — his marathon debut. Lear, like the vast majority of this year's entrants, is not a full-time runner. Yet, as for most of the competitors running this year's event, November 2 will nonetheless represent the culmination of months of hard work and planning. Each finisher, in the end, will have his or her own story to tell. In coming weeks, Lear will share with you his story: his goals, dreams, triumphs, and disappointments as he prepares to tackle the 26.2-mile behemoth for the first time. He hopes you'll enjoy the ride…

Entry #5, September 11, 2003 — Something Lost, Something Gained

Erik Kean, Sean Connolly, and El Bandito after their two-hour slog through the streets of Boulder, Colorado.

A mixed bag this week, but fortunately the highs vastly outweighed the lows. Considering that I hadn't done a workout since my aborted tempo run in New Jersey and that I missed two days of running altogether due to work conflicts, my first workout went well. I hit the track last Tuesday at Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado Springs and got my wheels turning for the first time in a while. My initial plan of doing a tempo run was thwarted by a soccer game at the school though, so I changed pace and did a fartlek around a practice field until the game ended, whereupon I snuck onto the track and finished up the run with some 100-meter strides with a 300-meter jog. Two things about the workout particularly stuck me: one, the track at Cheyenne Mountain is gorgeous. It's a really soft eight-lane tartan track that would be the envy of most universities. And situated as it is against Cheyenne Mountain, overlooking Colorado Springs, it provides a spectacular view. Two, it took me quite a long time to regain my breath after the strides. My guess is that the track sits at an elevation of 6,500 or 7,000 feet — not that much higher than CU's track in Boulder —which is at 5,500 feet — yet it feels vastly more difficult to maintain a good pace up here. Perhaps I just need to spend more time training up here to adjust. I'll have to wait and see.

I also did what is undoubtedly one of the most scenic runs in America last week when I ran a loop just west of Colorado Springs at a trailhead called Waldo Canyon. Locals have raved about it, and I was not disappointed. Moreover, I was shocked when I hit the trail to recall that I had run it nine years ago on my first-ever trip to Colorado Springs. I was at a camp at the Olympic Training Center in the summer of 1994 with, among others, a local kid about to enter his freshman year at CU: Adam Goucher. I had completely forgotten about the trail, yet being out there brought back memories down to the conversation I had on the run with Goucher and a strong distance runner from Penn State, Artie Gilkes. If memory serves, we discussed how cool it would be to have a post-collegiate running club in Colorado. I won't bore you with the details of our conversation. I will say that the views from Waldo Canyon and the remarkable changes in topography make it a trail you have to put on your list, should you venture out to southern Colorado.

My week ended as it did a week ago, with another two-hour run. I did this one in Boulder with a couple buddies, Erik Kean, a former stalwart and captain of the cross country team at Princeton University who once placed second in the (endangered) Heptagonal Conference Cross Country Championships and now lives and trains in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Sean Connolly, a former distance stud for the Pirates of East Carolina University. I don't know whether to credit the perfect cool, drizzly weather or the buffalo burgers we were grilled and inhaled at 2:00 a.m. for the run's ease, but this deuce was remarkably easier than that of a week ago. In fact, the only difficulty I encountered on this one was a little GI distress. I am confident, however, that I can credit my abdominal rumblings to my not-so-wise decision to go 'round the world of beer' once I caught sight of the astonishing array of brews in my buddy John Carson's pad in Boulder. Lord only knows that while I wasn't quite making out what the foreign suds were saying Saturday night, they were speaking my language Sunday morning.

Till next week,
Chris