New York City Marathon Should You Follow Runnings 10 Percent Rule in 2021. I’d dedicated the requisite months of training to clocking my speed sessions and long runs How to Prep for the NYC Marathon Starting Now tempo workouts to lock in my race-day speed. Around 10 miles in, I knew I wasn’t going to make it.
I’d started in the final wave, which took off even later than typical—at noon. It was the first race post-pandemic cancellations, and race directors added another wave to spread out participants. Because of the late start, I probably made a few mistakes, including overfueling, which forced me to stop taking in calories and carbs around mile 15. I just couldn’t stomach any more gels or chews. But even before that, I felt nervous and nauseous all morning. I could have been devastated by my performance before I even reached the halfway mark.
Instead, I decided that the race was no longer about the time I clocked, but the experience of seeing the city come alive. I had just moved out of Brooklyn to Pennsylvania, and this was my chance to celebrate the city’s comeback and show support for a place that got me through pandemic times. I accepted that I’d walk here and there, and instead of relying on gels, I fueled myself with hugs from friends and family. I also let the cheers of strangers give me little shoves as I trekked to the finish. I not only survived those hard miles but even found a different way to enjoy (most of) them.
Still, I needed redemption. I wanted all the fitness I’d gained to pay off in performance, too. So I signed up for the New York City Half Marathon lottery shortly after marathon race day, and got in.
I’m hardly the first person to want to make amends for a race gone wrong. As I chatted with my friend, licensed psychologist and certified personal trainer Renee Exelbert, Ph.D., about the idea of seeking satisfaction for a poor performance by means of another race, she pointed out that such resilience is one of the key traits runners develop that allows us to keep lacing up our shoes.
“Resilience is a muscle we’re not born with, we have to work at it,” Exelbert, also the founder of The Metamorphosis Center, which combines exercise and psychotherapy, explained to me. “I think that we get sidetracked by not accomplishing these massive goals. But we never think about all the steps that it took for us to get to where we are, and we’re not very compassionate with ourselves [when we don’t get there].”
While I made several missteps during the marathon—letting nerves get the best of me, for one—Exelbert said that I probably made a crucial calculation that led me to success later: I kept going. I let my slower speed take a backseat to the process of just finishing.
“In the moment [when you realize you won’t hit your PR or finish your race], the brain starts to signal that there are mistakes happening,” Exelbert explained. “That moment is critical because it primes the brain for this process called neuroplasticity.” Essentially, neuroplasticity means your brain picks up experiences and failures and figures out a better way to get from point A to point B, sending out “a cocktail of neurochemicals” that keep us learning and getting better at specific tasks, like running, she said.
The key is talking to ourselves in a way that sets us up for success—not beating ourselves down for missing a goal, but accepting it and still continuing to step forward. (Research backs up the power of positive self-talk Nutrition - Weight Loss.)
This idea of neuroplasticity and rewiring our brains for better performances is why it’s so helpful to fail at goals on occasion. “Everybody thinks failure is avoiding mistakes,” Exelbert said. “But mistakes are 100 percent necessary to have success because it’s the only way that the brain learns to adapt.” Of course, no one signs up for a marathon to deliberately fail as a tactic to get better for the next one. But it’s a pretty damn good takeaway to keep in mind when you do realize that your finish time (or other goal) is out of reach.
It’s so easy for us runners to put most of our focus on PRs and paces during training and racing. But that means we miss out on the process of getting to both the start and finish of a race. We miss how magical a city feels during a marathon, how distinctly human it is to keep pushing through hardship, and how every time we slip into our running shoes Shoes & Gear.
And even when we fail—whether we miss a time or score a DNF—we always have the option for redemption, for a chance to prove to ourselves that we learned from our miscalculations and to reset our minds to fly through the next finish. You just have to give yourself the opportunity to help those mental and physical adjustments take hold.
Nutrition - Weight Loss.
Mallory Creveling, an ACE-certified personal trainer and RRCA-certified run coach, joined the Runner's World and Bicycling team in August 2021. She has more than a decade of experience covering fitness, health, and nutrition. As a freelance writer, her work appeared in Women's Health, Self, Men's Journal, Reader's Digest, and more. She has also held staff editorial positions at Family Circle and Shape magazines, as well as DailyBurn.com. A former New Yorker/Brooklynite, she's now based in Easton, PA.
