Equinox member Luis Colón reflects on his running journey one year after the NYC Marathon.
In Pursuit of 26.2 is a series following two Equinox members as they train for the New York City Marathon, from their first long-distance runs to the finish line. In the fall of 2023, our athletes followed a new personalized training program created by an Equinox Personal Run Coach, powered by Precision Run, and utilizing Equinox services to strengthen, stretch, and stabilize.
The day after crossing the finish line of the New York City Marathon last year, Luis Colón was so sore, he was “walking like a baby giraffe.” The first-time marathoner struggled to climb the stairs at the subway stations. And suddenly, his everyday routine was turned upside down, he recalls.
“You spend months and months training for [the marathon], and you have so much support from your friends and family, and then suddenly it's done,” he says. “Your entire routine with these long runs that you're doing on the weekends, and setting up your whole dietary, nutrition needs, and not going out on certain days, just being really in control of that — it suddenly disappeared and it's back to reality…You're on, like, this huge upper for those weeks and weeks. I was actually a little depressed for about a week or so. It took a while to bounce back.”
But thanks to his thorough training program, spearheaded by Equinox Personal Run Coach Corky, Luis clinched a 4:06:39 finish time and managed to dodge injury. That’s an accomplishment in and of itself, as 40 percent of NYC Marathon runners report an injury during training and 16 percent experience injury during or immediately after the race, according to a 2023 study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
So, it’s no wonder that, come spring, Luis stocked up on new sneakers, hit the pavement, and signed up for the October 20, 2024, marathon in Atlantic City — his hometown.
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As he trained for his second 26.2-mile race, Luis tapped into the tips he picked up from Coach Corky. He followed the same hydration and gel refueling plan the duo had drawn up last year. He baked long runs into his routine, focusing on consistency and staying positive when he missed a couple of sessions (which he struggled with last time around). He followed a similar taper plan to give his body the rest and recovery it needed to rebuild before the event, he says.
Luis also stuck with Precision Run classes, taking two to four a week in person and through the EQX+ app. “That definitely helped me, maybe not so much with speed work, but in terms of conditioning my body,” he says. “There will come moments in these long runs — marathons or half-marathons — where you get tired for a few seconds, and that's okay. But I was reminiscing on Precision Run even [during] this last marathon, just because I'd have, like, 30 or 60 seconds where I'm like, ‘Okay, I need to dial back on my pace and then amp it back up.’ I think having done that the past year once again, that was key to keeping me focused during those moments so I wasn't just stopping or tailing off my run.”
But Luis didn’t just copy and paste last year’s plan; he made tweaks to ensure the program synced with his new needs and favorite workouts. He swapped the one-on-one Pilates sessions he utilized last year with more mat Pilates (admittedly, he isn’t a reformer person) and Vinyasa Yoga classes at the Club and through the app. And he spent more time on athletic stretching, using sessions in the app and the movements he learned from Coach Patrick Taft, whom he trained with last year. “But this [marathon], the stretching was key, just so that my whole body was mobile and set,” he recalls. “...Now it feels natural. It doesn't feel like it's a task.
On race day, Luis was ready for a PR — and he had Coach Corky’s words of wisdom at the top of his mind: Don’t let the excitement of the race get the best of you. Focus on your pace for the first few miles and conserve your energy. “Those key miles at the beginning, I would say, are the most important factors and determining factors, where you just need to relax or, you know, [like] Taylor Swift [says], ‘Calm down,’” he says. “It's not as efficient to just go full force right away.
As the miles dwindled, Luis put more energy toward maintaining consistent form, specifically his arm drive, posture, and foot strike. It seems like a minor element, but Luis says it may have played a big role in his speedy recovery. Within the next three days, he was up and walking without any major pain.
The Atlantic City Marathon course itself was a bit flatter than New York’s, but it was blistering hot, the hydration stations were spaced further apart, and the section of unstable boardwalk added an extra challenge, he recalls. There wasn’t as much of a hype crew, especially in the final few miles. That’s when Luis had to “dig within” to push himself mentally and physically to the finish. Still, “running through all of those areas where you grew up in streets, and seeing all those sites, and I didn't have as heavy of a training plan leading into it, but I definitely felt a little bit more enthusiastic, being on home turf,” he says.
Luis clocked in at three hours and 44 minutes, shaving 22 minutes off his time..
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But the 33-year-old isn’t stopping at two marathons. The NYC Marathon was a “key milestone” in his life, and he hopes to run the course again in 2025, Luis says. Training for the long distances has not only forced him to stay on top of his physical health — particularly during the busy social and travel season — but it’s also had a positive influence on other arenas of his life.
“These attributes of waking up early and really taking accountability affect other areas of my life,” he says. “I feel more successful at work and personally with my friends and family and communication because of the running and because of the set-up of everything behind it.”