Another Sunday another long run, this one was an organized run by the NYRR, the ING NYC Marathon Tune-Up and 18 mile long run around Central Park.

The weather was perfect early in this morning for the 7am start, which is not really a fun hour to be out and ready to run. This meant a 5:45am wake up this morning and walking out to a neighborhood with people still coming home from the night before. Man do I miss those days and plan to have one after November 4, 2007, in the meantime it is early to bed and early to rise.

At the starting line I met up with on my training partners Mario and we took off through the crowds. Even though this was not a race it was chip timed and it still took me over 2 minutes to get to the starting line after the gun. This is due to huge crowds who just line up in the front of the pack and not according to their planned by per mile pace. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, worthy of its own post.

Mario and I took off with the plan to run easy and make sure to keep a conversational pace, which for us is 7:45 -8:00 per mile for an 18-20 mile run, about 1 minute slower than our race pace. Thanks to timers on the course and a Mario’s Garmin GPS watch we were able to maintain this pace mile after mile except for the first 2 miles which we had to run 8:45 and 8:30 due to the crowds. After that it was smooth sailing with me talking/yapping the whole way to our mini pace group that we put together of 5 guys, including a guy with the sweetest dreadlocks I have seen on a runner in a long time.

We completed the run in 2:22 about an average 7:55 pace and then I took off for another 2 miles to round it out and get my 20 miles in.

This run was a really morale booster for me because of my time but more important was great to see over 3,000 people out there for this 18 miler, which for many is the longest they have ever run in their lives.