{"id":209,"date":"2018-03-24T10:40:52","date_gmt":"2018-03-24T14:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/?p=209"},"modified":"2018-03-24T14:05:15","modified_gmt":"2018-03-24T18:05:15","slug":"why-the-new-york-city-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/2018\/03\/why-the-new-york-city-marathon\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the New York City Marathon?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I ran my first marathon, <a href=\"https:\/\/steamtownmarathon.com\/\">Steamtown<\/a> in 2004, to see if I could do it once. It was a great experience, but I was happy to wait a decade to do another&#8212;the training is so time-consuming! I quickly reverted to my weekly long run being 5 miles and my typical race being a 5K. At 50, in 2015, I ran the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rochestermarathon.com\/events\/marathon\">Rochester Marathon<\/a> with my sister-in-law. It was fun but I didn&#8217;t take the time to blog about it, and it&#8217;s so much less vivid to me now! Somewhere along the line, when I realized that New York wasn&#8217;t one you could be sure of getting into, I started entering the lottery almost every year (more consistently now that it&#8217;s free), figuring if I got in, it would be totally worth it. Despite the time and effort. Despite the cost (this is by far the most expensive race I&#8217;ve ever entered). Why? A bunch of reasons, in the order they come to me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The biggest marathon in the world!<\/strong> I can&#8217;t really imagine what that&#8217;s like. The largest field I&#8217;ve been a part of is probably the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hotchocolaterun.com\/\">Hot Chocolate Run<\/a>, with 6,000 runners and walkers. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tcsnycmarathon.org\/\">NYCM<\/a> is more than 50,000! The size alone is fascinating to me.<\/li>\n<li><strong>My home town!<\/strong> I was born and grew up in Manhattan and my mother and step-father still live there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>All five boroughs!<\/strong> Someday I want to do the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bike.nyc\/events\/td-five-boro-bike-tour\/\">Five Boro Bike Tour<\/a> but I haven&#8217;t made it yet. I love the idea of seeing the whole city and crossing so many bridges.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Bedford Avenue!<\/strong> It&#8217;s the longest street in Brooklyn. My brother lived in Williamsburg for a long time and founded <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nadasurf.com\">Nada Surf<\/a> there; he&#8217;s the one who told me how cool it was to watch it go by.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The race director greets the last finishers!<\/strong> And now <a href=\"https:\/\/www.runnersworld.com\/new-york-city-marathon\/back-to-the-finish-line-pros-cheer-on-new-york-city-marathons-final-runners\">the elite racers join him<\/a>. I&#8217;m slow enough that that really means a lot to me. At Steamtown I felt the pressure of &#8220;the course closes in 6 hours&#8221; (even though I ultimately broke 5 hours). I hated the one time I had the pace car right behind me in the Montrose 4th of July 10K (tiny field, pouring rain) and I now pick races so they&#8217;re big enough that I won&#8217;t be dead last, but I really sympathize with people who are and know they work as hard as anyone. A slow runner spends as much time on a marathon as an ultra! Races that treats slow finishers with dignity are special.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The crowd support!<\/strong> A million spectators? Wow. I love the description of the roar on 1st Avenue coming off the Queensboro Bridge. I really fed off the crowd energy for Steamtown, not that the smaller scale in Rochester was a negative&#8212;in fact, I enjoyed the peaceful stretches, and it was just a different experience&#8212;but I&#8217;m excited to feel it on a completely different scale.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The expo!<\/strong> I&#8217;ve enjoyed all the ones I&#8217;ve been to, but again they&#8217;ve been tiny compared to the Javits Center. 100+ exhibitors!<\/li>\n<li><strong>It&#8217;s an international destination event!<\/strong> I&#8217;ve yet to run a race that had participants much beyond the US. This draws people from 100+ countries!<\/li>\n<li><strong>The swag!<\/strong> The bigger the race the more there must be, and the poncho looks fantastic. I am prepared that there might not be much variety for food&#8230; hard to beat the <a href=\"https:\/\/5kforfarmland.org\/\">beer<\/a>\/<a href=\"http:\/\/happyvalleyhalfand5k.com\/\">cider donuts<\/a>\/<a href=\"https:\/\/www.runreg.com\/bridgeofflowersrace\">veggie dogs<\/a> type of spreads I get in the Valley.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all, a mass participation spectacle&#8212;I&#8217;m there!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I ran my first marathon, Steamtown in 2004, to see if I could do it once. It was a great experience, but I was happy to wait a decade to do another&#8212;the training is so time-consuming! I quickly reverted to my weekly long run being 5 miles and my typical race being a 5K. At [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/marathon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}