post# 15 11 days 13 h 11 m 14 s

In the course of training one has to do what is referred to as “your long run”. Ten, thirteen even fifteen mile runs are necessary as the weekly miles are piled on. But at some point before the marathon you want to go that extra distance so as to be sure you have what it takes, that you can step up when the time comes. You want to get at least close enough to your wall to touch it. This of course is no guarantee, as you’ll still push yourself during the main event. Even with only eleven days to go anything can happen between now and then.
I‘ve always had mixed feeling about this run. How far does one go to feel you’ve done the distance and not go so far that you feel you could have just run a marathon before the marathon. How anti-climatic. Well I did mine on Saturday. Running that distance in New York can be a challenge in itself if you don’t want to go to Central Park and run in circles. I decided to put my usual two courses together. I ran up to Prospect Park, once around the perimeter, once around the interior, back past home and on to the Brooklyn Bridge, over to Manhattan to the west side, down to Battery Park, up to 24th Street, returning over the Brooklyn Bridge. I was taking an educated guess that course would accumulate sufficient mileage. According to an online jogging calculator it was just north of 23 miles. Hence my issue. I could of just run another three miles and been done with marathon.
Don’t worry. I’m still psyched. Running with 38,000 other runners will still be a unique experience.
As far as the wall goes I didn’t seem to find it. I must note that I’ve been having a bit of an issue with a sore calf that at times has caused me to take some days off and ice. I was feeling it on Saturday and after the park half of the run, as I headed to the bridge, I ran past home, jumped in for a bag of ice, strapped it onto my calf and ran on like that. I don’t know if that’s a recommended technique but it seemed to do the trick. The real trick from now till November 7 is to still run, but nurse the calf.