Chapter 268 Starting the Sports Season 10

The other week training continued to be more intense because it was a few weeks before the team's first game, unfortunately for Coach Smith, Jake had applied for another two-day license to compete in the New York marathon.

This eventually broke the team's pace of training, but Coach Smith had to accept it because he knew Jake was competing for the win and even the university would want Jake to compete.

But this assured the coach that Jake would not be in the starting lineup in the early games as a punishment, after all, he could not set up a stable group if a starting player missed training a lot.

Jake also knew he wasn't right and promised that this was the last time he would do it at the end of the year, he just wanted to win all major marathons once to get the bounty and help even more in his training and also in the games themselves of the basketball team.

After all with these extra statistics on Resistance and agility, even his basketball performance would be much better, but he had no way to explain it to Coach Smith and had to accept the consequences of his decisions.

In the few days before the New York Marathon, Jake didn't even think about resting and always did his daily training with Zack, after those weeks of training it was much easier for Jake to run the 50 km at a speed of 2 minutes 54 seconds for 1 km.

Jake was not confident in increasing his training at all, after all he could not increase his speed and also do not want to increase the distance he ran per day, with 50 km that was more than the distance of a marathon he was almost over 3 hours in training, if he increased the distance would have to run longer.

By the time Zack's increased training intensity was almost accustomed to a distance of 6 km a day, this wasn't hard to do even for amateurs, so with more training at the gym, he could soon run longer.

Zack himself had not noticed any of this, but Jake with the help of the system had realized that Zack's physical condition was improving every week, he was much more physically prepared than the people who do basic exercises.

So by the end of the year, Zack would have a physical condition to run 12 km every day which was the same intensity as some elite runners, that was Jake's goal when Zack could run 32 km every day without tiring him would be ready for a marathon.

Maybe early next year when Jake had a new coach to run another track sport Zack would also have a better method of training, after training another day Jake and Zack returned to the dorm.

William was also waiting for both of them, after all, he had to wait for Jake to go to classes with him, as William was not training with both of them and was not jealous when he saw Zack's suffering, he can realize that Zack was much better physically than before training.

But who most noticed this change from Zack besides Jake was Aaron who was also training to play American football before getting hurt, he can see that Jake's training was very effective.

After attending classes with William Jake got a call from John before coming to basketball team training, it was no coincidence that Jake passed the times he could answer the phone for John and Emily.

"Hi Jake, I just wanted to call to see if it was all right for the New York Marathon?"

"Yes, I've already spoken to Coach Smith and will arrive a day earlier in New York."

"That's great, the folks at the New York Marathon organization have also sent you an invitation, they might be one of the few who thought you'd accept to run after a few weeks."

After winning the Olympics, marathon organizations began to show interest in inviting Jake to compete in marathons, this was especially true for Chicago and New York where Jake had competed before.

That was a respect that they could show to the best runners and even more to Jake who was an American, these were really the marathons Jake thought most about competing, after all in other countries it was harder for Jake to compete having to come back in a few days.

After a few days as planned Jake went to New York the day before the marathon after training with the basketball team in the evening, so he would compete for the next day in the marathon and return to the same day the university, so he would only lose 1 day of training.

Knowing that Jake would try to do something like this Coach Smith himself said that Jake didn't have to work hard and could take 3 days to rest better, but Jake assured that he didn't need to.

After all, he had to get used to this training routine if he really wanted to run after becoming an NBA pro, he didn't think NBA coaches who paid a huge million dollar salary would allow Jake to skip training just to run.

He came to town tired and went straight to the booked hotel to rest, luckily New York was near the university where he studied and so the trip was less tiring, Jake had a much stronger body than usual and knew that after a few hours of rest would be fine.

The other day he woke up early in the morning and went to the marathon start, John showed up and said he would be waiting for Jake at the finish line, after doing the warm-up exercises Jake again was the center of attention in the running.

Some of the professional athletes hoping to win were even mad at him who was trying to compete again a few weeks after winning in Chicago and breaking the world record, it was obvious that everyone felt pressured by Jake competing.

Normally athletes would participate in a maximum of 3 marathons during the year, so if they had to live on the prize money, they didn't know if Jake needed the prize money, but they knew this was Jake's fourth marathon in the year.

Of course, even if some didn't like it they wouldn't have the courage to say anything to Jake, after all, he was an elite and the best marathoner in the world today after achieving what he got.

Jake didn't care what others thought, he was too focused for today's marathon, he had rested for two days before that marathon without doing his daily training with Zack, and just did the training with the basketball team that was a light training for Jake.

What made Jake happy was that Zack was doing his daily training running the 6 km even without Jake having participated, which showed that he was serious about trying to improve to run a marathon.

After a few minutes of preparation the marathon for Jake began, he started running normally with the starting group in the race and hoped to continue like this for a few kilometers, the only competitor he thought was Giacomo Leone who won this marathon in Jake's past life with the time of 2 hours, 9 minutes and 54 seconds.

This was an easy time for Jake to normally do in training in just over 2 hours and 2 minutes, but after what happened last year Jake learned to never underestimate a marathon.

"The 1996 New York Marathon officially starts, the weather today looks good for a race, only after a few hours can we know who of those runners can win this marathon."

"Even if we have to wait a few hours to know who is the winner, we can know that we definitely have a favorite to win this marathon."

"Oh, we have someone like that? Tell us who it is then."

"This year's highlight is 17-year-old marathon runner Jake Smith, after his debut last year this will be his sixth marathon."

"So Jake will be competing this year too? I don't know if he can be a favorite for this race, last year he ventured like now in running a marathon less than a month after winning in Chicago and wounding himself, the same could have happened today."

"I don't think so, even though he was injured by bad luck last year he still came second in this marathon, this year he is much more experienced and got the gold medal in the Olympics and broke the Olympic and world record this year."

"I still think he may end up hurting himself again after forcing his body."

Jake did not care about the commentators arguing and ran with the first platoon at a normal race pace, after 5 km he still continued with the first platoon, after so many marathons Jake was much more experienced and learned to save energy in these races.

Many competitors who heard rumors about Jake joined him in the first race squad, some elite runners pulled off and moved away from this squad in the first place and others slowed down, no professional wanted to have their racing pace dictated by Jake.

But the elite runners who had no hope of winning followed Jake because they heard the rumor that everyone who ran with Jake nearly half, finished in the top 50 in Chicago.

Of course, no one in that group was running today because they were still recovering from the Chicago Marathon, but they told this information to several people, so always in this race, a group of almost 14 people was near Jake.

The rumor was that Jake didn't try to get away from the other runners and always kept the same running pace, even if that pace was too strong all professionals could run at that pace for a few kilometers.

After all, what was most important to runners was the steady pace of running that kept an athlete from getting tired more than necessary, all 14 of those people were elites and could take Jake's pace.

"Look at the group of runners around Jake, something like that happened in Chicago, everyone who could handle almost half of the marathon with him finished in the top 50."

"Some experts have already analyzed Jake's marathon, for the first few kilometers he always maintains a very strong and steady running pace and so doesn't lose much stamina."