Philly Marathon Race Report

Hey all! Thanks for the well wishes and advice on the marathon. Both the race and weekend went really well so now its time for the race report:

As for the weekend, Philadelphia seemed overwhelmed with runners. For being a big city race it was pretty unorganized and a lot of mass confusion with registration and race start. We (me, Liz, Jen and Roger) showed up on Saturday for the expo/check-in and had to wander around to find everything since there were no signs. My only real comparison with marathons is NYC and Philly kind of seemed like the blue collar child at the expo- a lot less big name companies and a lot more discount goods. Post check-in we grabbed a really good dinner at La Fourno on South Street (highly recommend) and walked around the historic sites for awhile. It was at this point that I realized race morning may be a little colder than planned...it was either the snow flurries or the wind chill in the teens that gave it away.

5:00 am wake up call on Sunday morning. Wind chill: 18 degrees. After some b'fast and a hot shower we walked down to the race start (Liz and Jen were starting line volunteers). My second complaint was the lack of pre-race goods (no drinks or food). After adjusting my goals I finally decided on 3h45m.

As everyone shivered waiting for the horn, we got an announcement that the horn had frozen and we'd being going off the loudspeaker countdown. It was really freakin' cold. The first 6 miles through the city were awesome. I really had to hold myself back from just crushing the start. It didn't seem like it at the time, but my HR monitor died between markers 5 and 6 and it was probably the best thing that could have happened. I quit staring at my watch and just ran off how I felt and got to take in the scenery. At mile 7 I passed the first out-of-city aid station and found all the drinks were frozen solid. Kind of sucked missing out on the drinks but the volunteers promised the next station was getting new "unfrozen" drinks. So after truckin' along another couple miles, I pulled up next to next station and was warned to slow down for ice. All the spilled drinks created skating rinks at the remaining aid stations and forced us to walk every time. Definitely fun watching the stubborn runners try to fly right by and instead eat pavement.

Anyways the day went really well and overall I'd definitely recommend the Philly race. I couldn't be happier with my time (3:47:32) and look forward to beating it the next time out. Thanks again everyone and a special thanks to Liz, Jen and Roger for making the trip down.

And nothing like Jim's cheesesteaks post-race...