My First Marathon and New Year Resolutions

Intro

Happy New Year! It has been a while since my last post and truth be told, I have struggled thinking about what to write. Last year, really crystalized for me the importance of setting goals. Emma and I have been writing New Year resolutions now for almost four years and what I like most about the tradition is the personal accountability that comes from writing something down and saying not just to yourself but to those around you that this is my goal and I am going to work to achieve it.

More often than not, I like to set ambitious and challenging goals. I don’t want to set the bar so low that I stumble over it easily. In fact, I don’t mind having goals that don’t work out at all and may even fall into the “unachievable category” so long as I truly give each my best shot. Quite often if I have chosen a good goal, I usually get more out of the attempt than I do from the end result. I believe the saying is “its the journey not the destination”. Running a marathon was one such goal I set for myself last year.

Philadelphia Marathon 2021

Growing up I was athletic, but I was never a runner. As a young man, I would run on a treadmill during a workout or go for the occasional jog and run the occasional 5k but I would never say that I was passionate about running. Weirdly, I have always been strangely fascinated by endurance athletes and runners, specifically those who ran marathons or longer distances, were the most interesting to me. The idea of running a marathon myself had always intrigued me, but I had never committed to the vision of myself training for and completing a 26.2 mile race.

That changed last year when in early 2021, I finally wrote “Running a Marathon” on my 2021 list of resolutions. Working from home as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic made the logistics around training a lot easier to figure out and on the morning of November 21st, 2021 I “toed the line” for the first time.

Thats me! On the right of the photo, struggling as I was approaching the final mile marker at mile 26. At the time this photo was captured, this was the longest distance I had ever run in my life.

Above is a screenshot of my official times and splits captured by Xact Results. At the very beginning of the journey of training for the marathon, I had a soft goal of running the distance in under four hours. As my training increased and I got closer to race day, I at one point thought that if all the stars aligned I could run in under 3:30. At the end of the day, I was really proud to come in just under four hours with a new found appreciation of just how challenging an experience a marathon can be as well as a new goal (more on this later).

Because I couldn’t help myself, I also scraped, cleaned, and made some interactive charts with data from other marathon finishers.

It probably comes at no shock that most people tend to slow down as the race progresses. Anecdotally, I remember thinking at mile 8 that I was feeling great and that I could possibly keep myself at an 8:30 or under pace for the rest of the race. By mile 14-15, I felt as though both my hamstrings were ready to go and I really understood then how mentally and physically taxing the end of a marathon can be. Its good to know that I wasn’t the only one really feeling it after the half way mark.

Lastly, I can’t resist an interactive 3D plot even if its not the most useful. Playing around with the chart and numbers a bit, I did come away very impressed with how fast the almost 300 60, 70, and 80 year old runners were. I only hope I will still be running marathons at that age.

New Year Resolutions 2022

What was the point of this blog post? Running a marathon was a New Year resolution manifested into reality in large part because I told people I would do it. In the same vein, I am publishing a list below of personal goals for 2022. Maybe next year at this time, I will give an update as to how everything turned out.

1. Run a 3:30 Marathon. I want to try to continue to develop as a runner and keep running a big part of my life. I think with some structured training that a 3:30 marathon is achievable. Ideally I can make it happen in NY in ‘22.

2. Obtain a professional MLE certification. I’ve always had an interest in applied machine learning, and sometimes I get to work on interesting “data-sciency” problems, but I would be lying if I said I felt fully comfortable building an end-to-end ML system.

3. Straight legs, palms on the floor. I’ve never been able to touch my toes. I’m not joking.

4. Read 6 new books. A classic New Year resolution.

5. Write 6 new blog posts. Good thing I’m getting a bit of a head start.

To anyone reading this, good luck on all of your goals this year!!