Andrew Motola is certainly in shape to turn in a decent time in the upcoming New York City Marathon when action begins at 9:10 a.m. on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on Sunday, November 1.
Running is not new for the 45-year-old Motola, who also competes in triathlons.
He is going out with the pros, elite athletes and the faster of the every day runners in the first wave of the New York City event.
Motola will be making his sixth appearance in the 26.2-mile grind, including his fourth in New York City. His personal best time for the five-borough marathon is 3 hours 20 minutes in 2006. He also ran in the Boston Marathon, where he was clocked in at 3:24. His first New York City Marathon came in 2004 when he turned in a 3:30 performance.
His goal is to run faster in the upcoming race than he has done in the past.
Motola heads the roster of competitors from his club, Team Brickwell, whose membership is comprised of runners from Queens and Nassau. They are seeing action in the most popular running event in the world.
“Out of our 100 members almost half are from Queens,” he said. “We have some very good runners, competitive people, and beginners in our club. In the marathon, some runners backed out for various reasons while others cancelled because of injuries and different issues.
However, Motola, whose wife Barrie is a kindergarten teacher at P.S. 94 in Little Neck, is set to cheer him on.
“My strategy for the marathon is to take ‘it’ out at a good pace, and save something for the second half, particularly for the last four [or] five miles, which is a real challenge for me,” Motola said. “I’d like to take the first half out in about an hour and 33-34 minutes, which would be at a 7:20-7:25 pace. Then I would like to hold on and do the whole race in under 3:15 if I could have a good second half. Anything under 3:20 would be a success for me.”
The course takes the runners from Brooklyn over the Pulaski Bridge and into Queens,
“Going over the bridge is a quiet part of the race, relatively speaking,” he said. “It’s when it starts to hurt. It is when I have to dig deep. In some ways, it gets easier a little bit later in the race when there are bigger crowds cheering me on. It is kind of an industrial area of the race going into Long Island City even with fewer crowds. Still, the whole race has great crowd support.”
Then the course goes over the Queensboro Bridge and into Manhattan.
“Going over the Queensboro Bridge is one of the most interesting parts of the race,” he went on. “The actual bridge itself is very quiet. In Manhattan the professional athletes and the fans go crazy.”
Every marathon Motola enters into has been very challenging.
“Marathon running is a lot of work,” he went on. “As you’re doing it, from my standpoint, it’s sometimes a question of ‘Why an I doing it?’ But whenever I’m done with it, I always feel that I’ve accomplished something. I always look back on marathons.”
Training for a marathon is a year round endeavor. Motola trains a lot more in the spring, summer and early fall than in the winter. Even through the winter, he runs, swims regularly for cross training and gets on a bicycle as much as he can. He tries to stay in decent shape, and hopefully peak toward the end of the summer into the fall.
He trains in different places. In Queens, he does some runs in Douglaston Manor, which has a challenging hilly course and trains from time to time in Cunningham Park.
For a marathon, Motola runs a lot less than the average runner just because he cross trains a lot and swims three days a week and rides his bicycle one or two days a week.
“An average week for me may be 30 to 40 miles or nine to 10 hours of training, which is relatively low for a marathoner,” Motola said. “Maybe, it would come to five hours of running. But it works for me.”
He started competing in marathons and races when he turned 35. He had been a swimmer at Bronx Science High School and then Albany State University. After college he got very tired of swimming, took time off and got back into swimming again when he was in his mid-30s.
“When I was swimming I was doing it with a lot of triathletes who were big runners,” he recalled. “So I started to cross train, run with some of them and do triathlons. Running is a great passion for me.”
Now he swims at CW Post College, Eisenhower Park, and United States Merchant Marine Academy in addition to running and working at his job. He recently competed in a triathlon in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Team Brickwell finished in first place in the relay. Motola’s son Gabe did the running and teammate Kevin Schmitt did the cycling to complete in the three-man relay team.
Motola, a resident of Great Neck, owns Brickwell Cycling and Multi Sports on 3 Northern Boulevard in Great Neck, a short walk east of the city line.
