Got to bed early the night before the marathon and much to my surprise slept pretty well. I was allocated the catch the 8am Staten Island ferry to the start, which I knew from the Statue Of Liberty sightseeing would take 20 mins on the Subway - I left the hotel at 7am just to be sure. I was in the third (and last) wave and was expecting to see plenty of runners on the subway, but there were only four other runners at my stop! The train took an absolute age to come and I was starting to debate whether or not to go overground and flag a taxi.
In any case, got to the Ferry in plenty of time - there was an absolutely huge crowd, mainly all runners. Actually missed the 8am ferry (too many people) but another ferry left about 5 mins later. On the ferry, met up with a Dublin guy who'd been in NY for 20 odd years. This was his third marathon, his first being the 2008 NY marathon - he done so well there that he qualified for Boston which I though was pretty impressive. Had a good long chat about a whole range of subjects, but probably the most relevant was the overview of the route which was pretty good.
After the ferry, hopped promptly on some busses to get to the "staging area" close to the start line. I still had about two hours to kill, so some idle chit chat with one or two people, but nothing much - I thought there'd be a lot more "craic". Still, there was a really good buzz around the place. There was plenty of free coffee, bagels, water, etc there and no end of toilets. At 9.40am, we heard the cannon go for the first wave which resulted in a massive cheer!
Soon enough we were called to our corral. I had been thinking of following the 4hrs 45m pace group but I ended up miles behind the 5hr guys in the corral, so just decided to go at my own pace. AS the second group got underway, we started moving up to the base of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge and our 10.20am start time. At that stage, the elite men would be 1/3 of their way through the race!
Anyways, that's enough for now - will do the rest of the run tomorrow night.
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1 comment:
It must have been great to be in a marathon with so many folks!
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