Brooklyn Experience Half Marathon

This is partly inspired by Chris Krycho's report on the 2026 Boston Marathon. He is proper fast. He ran the marathon at a 6:32/mi pace. My effort here is far less impressive, but is still a PR and a significant improvement on what I was running before, so I'm writing it up. My running is solidly in the impressive to non-runners, but not competitive bucket.

Anyway:

• Official time: 1:31:21
• Pace: 6:59/mi
• Overall: 583th
• Male 35-39: 71th

My previous PR was 1:36:21 , so it was exactly 5 minutes faster. W in the chat.

How'd it go training-wise?

The gist of the training block for this race was simply running more. I skimmed the Daniels' Running Formula as well, which influenced the kinds of runs I was doing: fitting them into his categories of long, easy, tempo, interval, and repetition. That was very helpful structure.

In previous training blocks, I've maintained a rough target of 15 miles a week. This time around I aimed for 20-25, which I think is a lot more appropriate for the kinds of times I'm aiming for. In general I've performed better than training would predict by some combination of talent, pain tolerance, and experience.

By dialing back the intensity of my long runs and incorporating a lot of cross-training (40-60mi bike rides), it felt surprisingly sustainable to do the extra miles. That said, I didn't do a ton of very long runs and never hit the half-marathon distance in training. This is partly the Daniels influence which prioritizes a lot of runs (5-6/week) and so you have a lot of opportunities to get the distance in.

I did hit the usual stumbling blocks: some foot pain that required a trip to the local podiatrist and five days off two weeks before the race.

How'd the race go?

We lucked out with weather - started around 44°F and ended around 55°F. It rained before the race but didn't rain at all during, and the puddles were minimal.

I started in Wave 1 Corral A like last time, but instead of hanging way to the back, tried to find the spot where I'd be running a goal space - vaguely "low 1:30s." My previous PR was 1:36:21 but with more training and the confidence that I should be running faster, I was thinking that 1:32 or something would be nice. And a "7 minute mile" is mentally comfortable for me, so targeting that felt both feasible and optimistic.

Starting too far back has been a trap in the past: psychologically, it's nicer to pass people than to be passed, but it means a ton of weaving and dodging early in the race which is a lot of energy and kind of risky. Lesson learned: start at the roughly correct spot!

This course is kind of brutal, basically nice and downhill for the first half, then it hits south Brooklyn's most notorious hill in Prospect Park at the end. The hill is not a huge deal at the start of a 5k but after 11 hard miles, it's tough. So, early on my pace was hovering around 6:45 but on the hilly segments it hit 7:19.

The stretch out to Eastern Parkway especially feels interminable, right at the middle-end of the race and with a gradual hill. That's where my mental game fell off a bit, but it wasn't a catastrophe and I was able to bring back the pace later on.

Lessons learned

As you can tell by my time, I am not a professional runner, and not in the front of the pack, but, ya know, not bad for an old guy. I've had a bunch of basic realizations and improvements running-wise:

• Just give in and get some super shoes. I run in Brooks Hyperion Max 2, which are kind of "stability super-trainers" but nevertheless have a nylon plate. They make a difference.
• Fuel! Consume carbs. For a half-marathon, it's not as big a deal as for a full because the folk wisdom is that you need additional carbs after about 45 minutes of exertion. So halfway through I slugged down a Maurten 100 gel. Before the race in the early morning, overnight oats. Some caffeine too, which hits me extra-hard because my life is otherwise caffeine-free.
• Note: not really carb-loading! Pulling from Bakline's episode about fueling, it kind of only works if you do huge quantities, barely works for women, and has to be a multi-day affair. Plus, glycogen goes along with water so it increases your weight a bit. Overall I'm not compelled to focus on it, but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if I'm totally wrong about this and swear by it in the future.
• Warm up a lot. Real runners are doing 3 miles of warm-up before their races. The setup for this race makes pre-race warmup kind of cramped, jogging in a tiny lane next to the corrals, but still - do it. It works.
• Controversial take: eating a lot more protein has helped me overall. Big asterisk: I'm a strict vegan and have been for a long time so my intake is probably low unless I really focus on it. But yeah - spending a little time to measure what I'm actually getting versus what I'm aiming for showed a wide gulf and I've found that I recover a bit faster with more, around 100g/day at least, inconsistently hit.
• The self-help stuff in the Confident Mind helps me a lot: in particular, trying to appreciate nervousness as a positive. I've also been enjoying the mantras of "slow is smooth and smooth is fast," and "relax and go faster." The mental stuff is invariably goofy to write about but it's real, it's a big part of the challenge.
• Via Phily Bowden, who I really admire for being very level-headed for an absolutely insane endurance athlete, I care about getting decent sleep the night before the night before the race. Like any brutally early wake-up for a thing I'm nervous about - 5am in this case - I will try my hardest to sleep well the night before but realistically it's usually terrible. But the night before that, pretty good, and it evens out to be fine! I did totally biff it on fueling strategies you've already tried because I had never had that kind of Maurten gel before, but it turned out fine.

I've been running competitively on-and-off since high school and still find stuff like this which seems basic that makes everything better. It's fun! My goal is just to get another PR at some point, and to be strong in this year's 5k series.