The Marathon! (Part 1)

I was pretty nervous the morning of the marathon so I didn't have any trouble waking up in time. In fact, I woke up before the alarm was scheduled to go off at 4:45.

Our hotel was right on Union Square and you could see the start line, and the Expotique tents, from our room window. Most people were going to start at 7:00am but walkers who expected to take more than 7 hours to finish were in the early start at 5:30am so I could already hear the noise of people milling around and some talking on a loudspeaker.

Because I had to turn the light on to get ready, Braman woke up and then Larsson. They were both excited about my big race. Nora, at least, kept on sleeping. I got dressed, got all my gear together, and headed over to the next street to the Lori's Diner that was open 24 hours to get some breakfast.

During training, I felt like I had had fairly successful long runs when I first ate a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. Since the advice I'd read and heard most often was not to try anything new on marathon day, I ordered a bowl of oatmeal (and some toast since I had a ten dollar bill, wasn't planning on carrying the change with me for the race and thought I'd get the most for my money.)

Lori's Diner was one of only two diners in that area (that I knew of) open 24 hours. There were an anticipated 15,000 runners in the race and I was worried that enough of them would have the same idea to get breakfast at Lori's that I might have to wait and not be able to get my breakfast in time. But I was pleased that there were only a few other groups of people in there when I came in.

Since I wasn't planning on lingering, I didn't bring a book with me so I passed the time while I sat at the counter waiting for my meal by looking at the other people in the diner. There were two groups of women sitting in booths, all suited up and numbered for the race. They all seemed happy with hearty appetites but I don't know exactly what they were talking about since I tried not to be a completely obvious eavesdropper.

Once my oatmeal came I was able to eat about half of it along with a few bites of toast. Another solitary runner came in and sat at the counter and ordered just toast. I drank half my cup of water, paid the bill, left the rest of the change for the tip, used the bathroom there so as to hopefully avoid any contact with port-a-potties, and left.

The whole diner process hadn't taken as long as I thought so I still had 15 minutes before I was supposed to meet my group from Team In Training at 6:15. I had to walk near our hotel on my way to meet them anyway so I decided to check in with Braman and the kids again.

There were so many people all over the place, many of them in purple shirts representing Team In Training, and I was starting to feel excited and hoped that Braman might be able to take a few pictures before the race. But Braman and the kids, naturally, were still in their pajamas so there are no pictures documenting the pre-race activities. I used the bathroom again (who in their right mind wants to use a port-a-potty?), hugged and kissed them all and left to go wait for the start of the race.

I met Liz and Alicia on the corner of the Square near their hotel. I'd trained with Liz in Ithaca. She had planned to run the full marathon but had hurt her leg during training and had decided to cut back to the half-marathon. Alicia I had just met the day before at the Pasta Party and we were both doing the full marathon, all 26.2 miles of it. I had also met Ellen and Linda the day before but both were walkers and Linda had started at 5:30 to walk the full marathon and Ellen was starting at 7:00 to walk the half-marathon.

Everyone was supposed to line up in groups according to their pace. After the elite runners, there were 5 pace groups based on your estimated minutes per mile: 6:30:8:59, 9:00-9:59, 10:00-11:59, 12:00 - 14:59 and 15:00 plus. We all joined the 10:00 - 11:59 minutes per mile group on the south side of Union Square on Geary Street right in front of Macy's department store. Each pace group was a block long.

We stood there and made small talk, listened to the local radio personality attempt to work us up into a frenzy, and waited for the race countdown. At 6:40, the elite runners started. Then, 20 long minutes later, the starting gun finally went off. We shuffled forward slowly until we reached the start line and, at about 7:10, I landed on the pad which activated my Champion Chip and my marathon officially began.

I didn't know it at the time but Braman was leaning out our hotel window trying to take a picture of the start of the race. It was still dark out and he had a hard time keeping his hand steady but you get a sense of the number of people moving forward on their way to the start. I'm probably in this group somewhere. Macy's, in front of which we waited for the race to start, is the big building in the background.