2025: Year of the Half Marathon

Unlike 2016, I didn’t “declare” this year the year of anything. It was a confluence of events that led to this being a mirror image of nine years ago.

We were running Syracuse anyway, because it was fun to run as a family during Xander’s college break and get him back to the train station for his return trip. Skunk is always on our schedule, a lovely local race that is such a harbinger of spring. We had hoped to run Seneca7 with our yoga team from last year, but we didn’t get in and then there were scheduling conflicts. Flower City was the same weekend, so we thought we’d jump into that as a decent substitute. Xander really wanted another go at Boston’s Run to Remember after running it as his first half marathon in 2016. We were going to be in town visiting Xander anyway, so that’d be a fourth half marathon. And then there’s Gorges, which we’ve missed only once due to a wedding cake delivery that conflicted with the race. Halfway through this marathon of half marathons (see what I did there?) I realized that this was the exact same lineup that I ran 9 years ago. And so there you have it, the year of the half marathon, part 2.

One of my work colleagues recently asked me when runners peak. It depends a lot on who you are, how you train, and what your running experience is. I didn’t run a lot as a kid, having fallen in love with running as an adult. Since the schedule nine years ago was the same as it was this year, I had a pretty objective measure of how my fitness fared over the greater part of a decade. Some of the courses are a bit different, with Gorges being the most notable change since the course changes every year, but a half marathon is a half marathon. I was happy to look back and compare times and find that, on balance, I was pretty competitive with my younger self.

Here’s how the times compared:

• Syracuse Half Marathon
  1:39:50 in 2016 (the Syracrazy year!) vs. 1:31:34 in 2025 (8:16 faster)
• Skunk Cabbage Half Marathon
  1:30:00 in 2016 vs. 1:31:20 in 2025 (1:20 slower)
• Flower City Half Marathon
  1:29:18 in 2016 vs. 1:32:16 in 2025 (2:58 slower)
• Boston’s Run to Remember
  1:29:51 in 2016 vs. 1:29:27 in 2025 (0:24 faster)
• Gorges Ithaca Half Marathon
  1:32:43 in 2016 vs. 1:27:53 in 2025 (4:50 faster, but different courses)

What's next? It’s a shift from running to hot yoga! Amy and I are embarking on a hot yoga challenge at YogOdyssey: 30 practices in 30 days. It all ends on my birthday, too. What better birthday present than the gift of a good sweat and the promise of improved flexibility? If anyone out there in Ithaca wants to give YogOdyssey a try, let me know. I have a monthly guest credit and would love to introduce you to the practice!