Final long run for Providence Marathon done

Reposted from my Daily Mile report.  Click here for the route.  Finished 22.1 miles in 3:57:08.

4th and final of my planned long run for Providence Marathon, in 3 weeks on May 2.  Since the marathon is relatively flat, I decided to come up with a new long run route that was flat.  Best place for that is the greenway around Manhattan, so I traced it all the way back and beyond to 20 miles and ended up with a starting point at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx.  I really wanted 22ish miles so I needed to find a short route in the park as a starting point, and Amy C came through with a couple of options, including ‘the flats’, a gravel loop that is 1.4 miles in the area of the park where I wanted to start.

So, I started with that loop, headed down Broadway into Manhattan, down Seaman to the end and hooked up with the top of the Greenway.  It literally is the top, as there is a quite a large hill in the early 2 miles to the GW Bridge.  At the bridge, the path very quickly gets down to sea level and then the rest of the run was to be flat.

At least that was the plan, until I got about 125th st, where the greenway was CLOSED!  Needed to detour over to Riverside, which is up a LONG and STEEP hill to get up to Grants Tomb.  Then along Riverside and Riverside Park before I could hook up with the greenway at 96th St.

The worst part of this run was when I hit the wall at mile 12.  Yes, mile 12.  Not sure what happened, but I totally lost it, and had to stop and walk awhile.  The best I can describe is that I felt a weird sugar imbalance.  At this point I was in the 40’s, which is a crowded area with street vendors.  Tried to get a pretzel, but the guy only had hot dogs, so I ate one, and then got a Gatorade.  Between those, I started running again at 42nd St, and felt much better.

Had my fair share of soreness, tiredness, etc the rest of the way, but was able to work through it.  In fact, the best part was that the last 2 miles was done at 10:15 pace!

Thought a lot about the NYC Triathlon on this run.  The flats loop in Van Cortlandt Park is approximately where the bike turn-around is on Mosholo Parkway.  The top part of the greenway is on the Henry Hudson Parkway, which is the bike course, and Riverside Park passes through the start and end of the swim, and the transition areas.  Made me excited about my planned triathlons this year, which will be my focus starting on May 3!