If you're talking about an athlete in good shape, but without a proper training cycle, then my experience was bittersweet.
I didn't have time for a proper mileage ramp-up for NYC marathon. Mostly I found peace with it: 'You don't need to PR, just have fun, it's NYC!'. But there is a part that hoped that even with inadequate training I can still crush it.
I didn't crush it, but overall I'm still happy I've done it. Decent time, half-decent pacing, great race experience.
If you're talking about beginners that haven't opened their potential yet, it was my first race, a half-marathon. It was interesting. For almost 2 hours everybody was passing me: old people, young people, fat people, thin people, short people, tall people. But I was still super happy.
Because I was just upgraded to a new class of beings. Before that my whole life the understanding of a long run was a 3K cross-country race and it was too long, painful and boring. Now I was one of those people who can run 13 miles, no matter how slow!
I didn't have time for a proper mileage ramp-up for NYC marathon. Mostly I found peace with it: 'You don't need to PR, just have fun, it's NYC!'. But there is a part that hoped that even with inadequate training I can still crush it.
I didn't crush it, but overall I'm still happy I've done it. Decent time, half-decent pacing, great race experience.
If you're talking about beginners that haven't opened their potential yet, it was my first race, a half-marathon. It was interesting. For almost 2 hours everybody was passing me: old people, young people, fat people, thin people, short people, tall people. But I was still super happy.
Because I was just upgraded to a new class of beings. Before that my whole life the understanding of a long run was a 3K cross-country race and it was too long, painful and boring. Now I was one of those people who can run 13 miles, no matter how slow!