Given I very much liked the synchronicity of having the 50th running of the NYC Marathon be my 50th marathon, and that the Marine Corps Marathon was turned into a virtual, I needed to add one more between the Boston Marathon (my 48th total marathon) and NYC in two weeks. Coming up to Long Island worked quite well to serve as marathon 49.
The morning started off nice and chilly -- about 45 degrees. The start being only about 20 minutes from my mom's place made it very easy to have a relatively late wake-up and departure time. And with the start line actually being right at the Babylon LIRR station, not only using the regular bathroom (rather than port-a-potty) and standing indoors until about 15 minutes before the start was great.
Sure, the politicians talked a bit too long, and we started at least 5-10 minutes late, but once we did, it was a pretty good course. Relatively quickly we made our way to the Robert Moses Causeway, south over the South Bay bridges and onto the bike path that runs past several of the beaches. No wind at all, and a mostly gentle rolling hills course -- save for that one "major" bridge which is a rather steep hill (at about Mile 6 and 24). Very small field in the marathon (only 247 finished) amid the 3000 people running the four simultaneous/overlapping races (5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon), and realtively few people cheering along the course, save for those people volunteering at the aid stations. That's usually my biggest knock on the tiny race fields -- I really do well with the larger crowds of cheering spectators; I definitely get energy from that.
Throughout the entire race, I was on the cusp of getting 3:15. It was tough to tell just where I was with respect to it. I managed to finish with 3:15:20 -- 13 seconds better than my time in Chicago 2 weeks ago. (!)
And after a little while, once enough people from my age group had crossed the line, my next, biggest result was available: I got 1st in my age group. (!) And it turns out that I beat 2nd place in my AG by nearly 9 minutes.
I finished at 10:45am, and found out the result at approximately 11am, while they were handing out the awards for the half marathon. The award ceremony for the full marathon was scheduled for noon. Ugh. But, hey, they had the standard podium set-up, and I was hopeful I could have a normal photo with my fellow competitors.
Eventually, after eating the finish area's bagel and peanut butter, and partaking of the stretching table, I wait the extra half hour to get that photo.
No such luck. Noon came and went, and the ceremony didn't happen. OK, so they're running a little late. 12:30pm comes and goes. Still nothing. I eventually ask multiple people what's going on. It takes talking to 3 or 4 different people before someone tells me it's going to be another 10 minutes, since they were still waiting for 1 or 2 people to finish the race to hold the ceremony. 12:50pm and they finally start it. They make the various announcements for women and men, in the various AGs starting with the oldest groups and working their way down. Almost NO ONE bothers coming forward. They already collected their awards and left. While I understand waiting to have a full set of finishers to do their particular award ceremony, they should not have postponed the ceremony for everyone else, as just about everyone was gone. Deprives the runners of that ceremony and photo, and deprives the race itself of having that photo to use for publicity.
That said, though, coming in 1st in my age group (out of 22 finishing in the group) and coming in 22nd overal (out of 247 finishing the marathon) is a great result. Happy that this went as wel as it did. Only a couple of minor blisters (since I still can't wear the toe socks I usually wear), and walking seems like it will be pretty normal. Great way of maintaining my fitness in advance of NYC (where I'm looking for 3:30 or better) and Little Rock (where I want better than 3:15, and as close to 3:00 as possible).
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