Tag: half-marathon

The Pocantico Hills Marathon is a trail marathon held in the very scenic Rockefeller State Park Preserve and it just celebrated it’s 5^th year. This is my second time running this marathon and one I see myself repeating again in the future.  It’s a marathon that has a very generous cutoff that makes it feasible to hike the course if desired and is thus a great event for a first time attempt at a trail marathon.  The trails are gravel carriage roads with ~2500 feet of elevation gain over the course of the race. It’s a very runnable course. It’s a course I like so much that I took the gpx file from my Coros watch’s recording of the run and created a route in Komoot so I can run the course again in the future (https://www.komoot.com/tour/2678030551). It’s also the type of course I need to focus on more of as I tend to be more of mountain goat than a race horse.  I do really well in ultra’s that are very steep and technical (https://survivingultra.com/2025/04/28/nj-spartan-ultra/), but tend to be very slow at the flatter more runnable courses.

While I was still towards the back of the pack in this event, I’m happy with my performance in the race as my training had been focused more on leaning out than running over the past few months and I had been in a caloric deficit up until a couple of days before the race.  My performance in the race showed I didn’t step backwards despite not being as focused on running recently and I feel I am well positioned now to start building towards completing a 50 miler over the course of the next year.  Of course, being back of the pack means there is a lot of work to do, but I think my now improved strength to bodyweight ratio has me well situated to start that buildup and eventually go faster and further than before. 

The Spartan Ultra from 2 weeks ago gave me the confidence that I am progressing and improving as an ultramarathoner and that my training is moving me in the right direction, as for the first time I was not struggling to make a cut off.  I suspect, however, part of why I did well was the steepness of the race and the fact that the cutoffs were designed around a course that hiking the majority of it was assumed.  I think I have developed a very high work capacity but that I still need to continue to improve as a runner.  I suspect that I would not have been anywhere near as close to the front of the pack if it had been a race with less elevation gain and more runnable terrain.  To test this, I have registered for a trail marathon in November that features an elevation gain of only around 2.5K feet.  While not flat, this is a course that will be significantly more runnable than my last race and will allow me to test my theory.  When I eventually put a 50 miler on the calendar I want to make sure to pick a course that will play to my particular strengths and weaknesses and so I want to put this to the test. 

An early November race date gives me roughly six months to train for it and I intend to do so by following a true marathon prep program for the first time, albeit one that maintains an element of strength training.  Given the time I have to prepare for the race, I intend to pursue the following build up in prepping for the event:

1. Finish the Mountain Tactical Institute (MTI) Max Effort Strength and 6 mile Run program that I’m currently running
2. Move onto the MTI Max Effort Strength and Aerobic Base program
3. End with the MTI Meathead Marathon plan which is designed to build more strength focused athletes up towards being able to run marathon distances. 

If all goes well, I’m hoping be ready to run and not power hike the vast majority of the course.