NYC Marathon weekend part one: the pre-race.

Andrew and I in front of the Manhattan skyline, minutes after our arrival in NYC!


I am finally back from NYC and back to semi-normal. Fortunately, my physical recovery has been amazingly fast. I felt very stiff Monday, less stiff Tuesday, and I feel fine today. I even went to the gym this morning! Unfortunately, I came home to two very busy weeks in terms of work and other commitments. Still, I want to take a few minutes to tell a bit more of my NYC marathon story. Its a long story, so I am breaking it up into two parts. First up: my marathon pre-race, which happened on Saturday morning.

As I have mentioned before, Saturday was both the day of the Annapolis Striders' Down's Park 5-miler and the last day of the NYC marathon expo. Because Down's Park is part of the Champ Series, I really did not want to miss it. Because the expo is where you must pick up your race number in order to run the marathon, I really did not want to miss that! Thankfully, the Down's Park race director (Don) and my lovely boyfriend (Andrew) helped me find a solution: Andrew agreed to volunteer on my behalf as a parking attendant Saturday morning while I ran the race early as part of the worker's run. Thus, I got credit for the race in the Champ Series and I got to leave for NYC with plenty of time to spare. I could not be more thankful to Don and Andrew!

When I ran Down's Park in 2010, I had a great experience but not a great finishing time. I went into the 2010 race hoping to finish under 50 minutes. Then, I spent the first mile or so chatting with friends and not paying attention to my pace. I picked it up in miles 2-4 and really pushed it in mile 5, but it wasn't enough. My 2010 time was 51:58.

This year, I knew my time for the race would not matter (worker's run times are not official), so I planned to take it easy and practice my marathon goal pace of 11-11:30 minute miles. My biggest fear going into the marathon was going out too fast, so I thought of Down's Park as a final chance to practice slowing down. For the first mile, I ran what felt like an easy pace and focused on not getting lost (easy to do without other runners!). When I saw the first mile marker, I checked my watch: just over 10 minutes. Oops.

For the second mile, I gave myself a new mantra: "Slow down. Take it easy. Slow down. Take it easy."  At the 2-mile mark, I checked my watch again and learned that I had run mile 2 in less than 10 minutes. The part of me that was worried about the marathon got frustrated, but the competitve part of me started thinking "You could do this in under 50 minutes easily." I decided to stop looking at my watch.

Miles 3 and 4 were fairly relaxed and fun. I passed some beautiful scenery. I also got to run through a crowd of Striders gathering before the real race, including several who yelled "Good luck in NY!" At mile 5, I decided that a tiny push to the finish wouldn't hurt and stepped it up just a little. In the end, I crossed the finish line with an unofficial time of 48:35. Not bad for taking it easy! Now, I just need to find another 5-mile race so I can set an official PR.

After I finished the race and Andrew finished his parking attendant duties, we got in the car and drove straight to NYC. We made it to the expo at a little after 2pm and I picked up my number with hours to spare. Whew! The expo was so crowded that I decided to skip shopping in lieu of getting to my host's apartment and taking a long-overdue shower. After that, we had a lovely dinner with some NYC friends and then I went to bed nervous and excited for race day!