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NYC 2003 - My First Marathon
by Chris Lear

Chris Lear

Over the past two months, Chris Lear, a Colorado-based full-time sales representative and freelance writer, has been 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. Lear has shared with you his story: his goals, dreams, triumphs, and disappointments as he prepares to tackle the 26.2-mile behemoth for the first time.

Entry #10, October 16, 2003 — The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

So last week I had a conversation with Clint Wells, one of the USA's premier distance runners who happens to be making his marathon debut in NYC in a couple of weeks. He recounted a conversation he'd had with fellow marathoners Shawn Found and Keith Dowling during a late summer training stint in Breckenridge, Colorado, in which they discussed the "good puppet" and the "bad puppet". The good puppet is the little guy who sits on your shoulder and tells you: "Go to bed. Get some rest — you'll be nailing a workout when the sun comes a risin' in the a.m." The bad puppet just chuckles: "Listen friend, simmer down now. You're in Chi-town. The average guy here ate Jenny Craig for breakfast and is having a beer and watching the Cubbies. Relax and eat a pizza." At least that's what the bad puppet was whispering in my ear last week.

It's hard to fight the bad puppet. Believe me, I tried. I lost, big-time, especially on Friday night. Every time I tapped out at the club, with a little wink and a nod to the good puppet, there was the bad puppet, handing me another Mustang 75.

The good puppet got his revenge on Saturday morning, when he ran intervals around the inside of my skull with a couple of sledgehammers. He was far more convincing than he'd been Friday night, that pious little...

Not to worry though, folks, the good puppet won his share of battles. Upon my arrival in Chicago I hit the trail along Lake Michigan with my spanking new heart rate monitor and smoked my tempo run. As far as I could tell, the trail isn't marked, so I have no idea how far I ran, but that's precisely why I got tested last week: so that I could run sensible workouts without the other data.

The big surprise came the next morning, when I experienced far more muscle soreness than I have in quite some time. That soreness was exacerbated by a few more hard efforts, including an interval workout I ran with one of Illinois' finest, Ed Torres, later in the week.

I think the soreness is primarily due to the increased tempo of all my runs at sea level, and to the fact that all of my runs have been on pavement — a marked contrast to my usual training routine in Colorado. I have heard tales from other Colorado runners about how unprepared they were to run 26 miles on the road after running so many miles on Colorado's trails, so I think the hardening effect I could get from all the pounding may ultimately benefit me come November 2. Of course, that's if the good puppet sees to it that I get out on the road.

So there you have it, the good and the bad from my first week in Chicago. The ugly? That didn't come until Sunday morning, when I pored over the results of the Chicago Marathon. Some of the positive splits I saw — splits that read like: 1st half: 1:12, 2nd half: 1:22 — made me cringe almost as grotesquely as I did upon waking Saturday morning. Only this time, I didn't need the bad puppet to pound this lesson home: be conservative in NYC 2003 or get walked down by P. Diddy.

Ciao,
Chris
     
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