IamTrike.....congrats on getting in and doing NYC. What was the experience like....runners village, getting to the start line, the course, aren't there quite a few hills?, the after race experience, etc. Would like to do it just not sure if this year is the year.
First off I'll just echo that it is an amazing race. It was a great experience and I definitely want to do it again. This past year it was very windy (we had 20+ mph headwinds for the first 20 miles) and that had a pretty big impact on everything.
Expo
The expo was probably around the same size as Disney maybe slightly larger. I think the area for the official Merchandise was about the same size as Disney's marathon weekend, but it was dedicated to a single event vs Marathon weekend where they have merchandise for 6 events. As a result there is a lot more variety in what you can get. Also the Asics store in time square as well a several other stores sell race merchandise. I'm not really an expo connoisseur though.
Getting to the Race
We were staying at a hotel in Central Manhattan so we needed to take the bus to get to the start line. We were on one of the first busses so we didn't notice any transportation issues. That did mean that we were on a bus about 5:30 in the morning and were dropped off near the start about 6 or 6:15. As a result we had around 4 hours before we needed to get into the corrals. If I had to do it over again I would take a later bus. We were waiting around too long a head of time. I'm so used to races starting before 8 that it was weird to have a 10:30 ish start.
Pre-Race
The area where you could hang out before the race was huge. There were a couple big fields as well as a paved area with vendors selling/giving away food. Dunkin Donuts was there and they were giving away hats too. I didn't spend too much time there are I was able to get into United's pre-race hospitality tent. It was nice but it was extremely cold due to the wind. All in all it seemed well thought out. There are severals starting waves. I think waves went about every half hour. Each wave was divided into 3 different groups. (the groups determined where you started upper level of the bridge northbound, upper level southbound and lower level. All runners start running in the same direction, but I don't think the courses all converged until about mile 11). Each of those groups was divided into several corrals. About 30-45 minutes before your wave was supposed to start you you reported to your corral. There were porta-potties in these corrals. The corrals were fenced in areas off to the side of the bridge. Pretty close to start of the race they moved you by corral to your appropriate postion on the bridge. I don't remember as much fanfare before the race as what they have at Disney.
The Race
You start off running on the bridge (I think it goes to Long Island) It was one of the bigger elevation gains of the whole race. The course was fairly crowded the whole race. I think it seemed more crowded than Disney. For the most part if you weren't on a bridge there were people on both sides of the course yelling. We were told afterwards that we had a lighter crowd support day because usually it's several people deep on both sides of the race for the entire race. It was still incredible. I had a blast and spent the first couple miles high 5ing kids and cheering. It was very energizing, but as a result I was probably running a little faster than I should have been running. It seemed like a party event. I think there were 3 main hills and they were all on bridges. I really enjoyed the course, but it's absolutely the spectators that make this race. Central park was also great, but I love running there whenever I'm in NY for business.
Post Race
As I mentioned before I had overdone it early in the race. By mile 18 I was toast so it was an unpleasant slog to the finish. I was so ready to cross the finish line and be done. The problem is there is still a long way to walk once you finish. I think we finished at about 68th ave. It's fenced off though so it seemed like we had to walk about 1/2 a mile north in the park before you could turn and get out. It was actually fenced off the entire way and you were pretty packed in essentially a chute that lasted for what seemed like about a 1.5 or 2 miles. I say two miles because the shoot looped back down to 61st before it actually ended. That walk at the end was really the only bad part of the race.
Marathon Monday
The Monday after the marathon NYRR has another expo setup. They have an area with all the runners names that finish before a certain time printed, they just sent me a magazine with all the finishers in it too. They had lots of merchandise for sale that has been embroidered with Marathon Finisher 2014. I really wish Disney would learn from this. I think it opened about 8 or 9 we got there about an hour after it opened and had to wait about 45 minutes just to get in to shop.
All told there's a good reason for this race to be on people's bucket list. It's got a great location, amazing fan support and is huge.
