New Marathon PR at the NYC Marathon
I completed the ING NYC Marathon yesterday with a finish time of 3 hours, 16 minutes and 58 seconds. This is my best finish time for a marathon, an improvement of about ten minutes over the last NY Marathon I did in 2006.
In the spring of 2008 I ran the NJ Marathon in Long Branch with a finish time of 3:46:28, so my time in NY is actually a 30 minute improvement in a harder race, just seven months later.
Next time I run the NY Marathon, I must remember to bring a sleeping bag and/or thermal foil. Waiting in the cold at the base of the Verazzano Narrows bridge for four hours before the start of the race is quite a task. Unfortunately, there is no way around this since runners in the first wave must catch the mid-town bus at 5am to get to Staten Island before 7am when the bridge is closed off to traffic. There are a few large tents which fill to capacity very quickly. But they are not heated; they just help block some of the cold wind. I snapped a few photos of the staging area with a disposable camera, since it’s an experience I don’t think is fully appreciated 🙂