For the past two years, I have found street parking near the race. This year, I decided to suck it up and just park at the Hospital parking garage. No reason to waste the liquid gold in my tank. Race number pickup was efficient, as with all NYRR races.

A proper warmup was necessary, especially because of sub-freezing temps (NYRR recorded 29 degrees with 10mph winds). 15 minutes of jogging was all I needed, plus some stretching in the Armory, followed by a chilly jog to the start. I would later find out that I probably underdressed just a bit.

I wanted to run this race completely by how I felt. Mile 1 split was 5:37. At that point, the cold air did not bother me. However, after making the turnaround at Fort Tyron Park and back up the hill onto Fort Washington Ave, my nose was really hurting – to a point where I could not breathe properly through them. Then came Mile 2, 5:52. That was a huge deficit from the first mile. Mile 3 wasn’t pretty either with a 5:42. From 8 minutes into the race, until the end, the effort level and feeling was complete suffering. And although a 17:52 (Garmin data) was not what I had planned, it was still a 40 sec & 120 sec improvement from 2012 and 2011, respectively. Hopefully from now on I will remember the feeling of racing in the Heights!