At the Yonkers marathon
What can one say about the Yonkers marathon that hasn’t already been said? It has been described over the years as a “beast of a marathon”, or even a “monster” because of its seemingly never-ending hills. This old marathon is still considered one of the nation’s most challenging. And this year the beast got the better of me.
I won’t bore you with endless details, so instead here are the stats:
Finishing time: 4:10:03(my slowest marathon ever) compared to 3:40 last year
Rank: 109 out of 220 finishers
I was 33 out of 53 in the 30 to 39 age group
The good news is that I didn’t drop the balls once(2 years in a row no drops!). In fact I’ve been using the same Gballz beanbags since my first marathon. So why was I so slow this year? I think the rerouting of the marathon route made it even hillier, and I may have started out a little too fast. By the time I got to this hill at mile 23 I could barely move and I felt like I injured my right knee, and so I had to walk for a little while after. Still, I PRed some shorter distances and got tremendous crowd support. It was great going through east Yonkers for a change, unlike the other 2 times I did this race when it was a double loop around west Yonkers.
As far as I can tell my training was adequate, though maybe I should have done some more long runs. Although I’m a little disappointed with my performance, this was a valuable learning experience. I believe I’m already a better runner/joggler because of this experience.
Thank you city of Yonkers and a big thanks to everyone who cheered me on as I passed.
If you ran the Yonkers marathon, I would love hearing from you in the comments.
AcroTrekker 