Next Sunday November 5, Mark Malander, Stuart Schept and I (Andres Hillar) will be running the NYC Marathon as a team. And the team name is? you bet, Reston Runners!

The idea to run as a team started around May. I had been running with Mark for some months, training for this year's Boston Marathon. My goal was to run a qualifying time for the NYC Marathon (2:55), so as an extra incentive, Mark offered "if you qualify for NY, I'll run it with you". I run 2:53:39 at Boston, so Mark had to keep his word! A couple of weeks later we told Stuart about us running NY and trying to put together a Reston Runners team. He was in immediately! We started to train together following Jack Daniels "Running Formula? program, with mileage up to 75 miles/week (Mark) and 65 miles/week (Stuart and Andres). On Wednesdays evenings we would normally do Intervals (first 6 weeks) or Tempo running (following 12 weeks), starting with 4 miles and building up to 8 miles of Tempo running, for a total of 8 to 13 miles in a workout, always including warm-up and cool-down easy miles. Sundays were long runs, from 15 up to 22 miles, mostly run with Reston Runners. But when we had to do our projected marathon pace runs, or combination of Tempo/Long runs, we normally run on the W&OD and Rt. 28 heading west and back, so we could control the pace every mile. And of course, we run some preparation races, like the Army Ten Miler, Paul VI 5K, Annapolis 10 miler, Rockville 8K and 10K, Lawyers Have Heart 10K and Philadelphia Half Marathon.

The time has come. If you want to follow us live after your Sunday morning run on November 5, go to  www.ingnycmarathon.org  . They will have live splits every 5K.