My leg was the part I did not trust.
Four days before the Brooklyn Half, I asked the Prospect Park Track Club list if anybody planned to run somewhere between 6:50 and 7:30 pace. I added a qualifier: provided my leg was doing A-OK.
The pace question got answered. The rest of the plan was less organized.
The next morning I realized there was no race-day bib pickup. I had missed the window and asked the club if anybody could help. A teammate picked up my bib and left it at JackRabbit for me. I offered him a beer. Somebody else pointed out that NYRR had stopped doing race-day pickup years earlier.
“Ha! How little I know! Thanks consider me informed.”
That was race preparation, more or less.
The morning came with light rain, a temperature around 50 degrees, and full humidity. The course started by Prospect Park, ran through Brooklyn, and finished at Coney Island. I did not run the 6:50-to-7:30 pace I had asked about.
I ran 1:20:44.
That is 6:10 per mile for a half marathon. I finished 274th overall and 82nd in my age group. More importantly, I got under the 1:21 time standard for the 2019 New York City Marathon.
The leg held. The fitness was better than I had let myself assume. A year earlier I was still trying to figure out what kind of runner I could become again. Now I had a marathon qualifier from a wet morning in Brooklyn.
The result did not make the lead-up any tidier. I still needed a teammate to rescue my bib. I still showed up unsure about the leg. I still had to run thirteen miles through cold rain before I knew what was there.
At Coney Island, the clock had the answer: 1:20:44.