NYC Marathon Race Day

Race Day is finally here.  It was so weird for November 6th to actually be here.  I managed to get some sleep the night before even though I woke up a few times.  When my cell phone alarm went off, I quickly shut off my phone so I wouldn't wake everyone up.  I got ready as quietly as I could, but of course within 15 minutes, Kara, Donna, and Melissa were all awake.  I mean, that's what you get when three Mom's are in the room who all are used to getting up with each of their two kids.  I'm not sure they can even sleep late if they tried. :)

As part of being with Fred's Team, there was a lot of "special treatment" on marathon morning.  I really can't say enough about Fred's Team.  They were all really great people and were extremely organized.  Breakfast was from 4:45AM to 6:00AM, team picture at 6:00AM, and board the bus at 6:15AM.  Luckily I was also staying in the hotel with all of those activities, so all I had to do was go downstairs.  After getting some last words of encouragement from the girls, Donna actually came downstairs with me for breakfast.  We got a bagel and banana.  This picture was of me with my clear bag of goods just before breakfast. 

After breakfast, we lined up for our team picture.  Here's what the picture looked like from Fred's Team. 

After the picture, we all filed into the bus.  The Fred's Team buses have a police escort to Staten Island.  It was like we were the President.  Even with the NYPD escorting us to Staten Island, it took about an hour to get to Fort Wadsworth.  When we finally got there, we all filed off the bus to go into the fort.  For Fred's Team, the top 450 fundraisers got a wrist band to go into the special tent in Charity Village.  It was basically a tent like for a wedding reception with a blue tarp on the bottom.  We had special green wristbands that let us into Charity Village.  The best part was that we had our own porta potty's in the village.  It's amazing how much this race prep can become about peeing and where to pee.  I was definitely obsessed with how much I was drinking and making sure I peed so that I didn't have to stop during the race. 

I was able to meet up with my two running buddies on Fred's Team who I had done a few training runs with.  We hung out in the text and chatted and took turns watching each other's bag.  I was in Wave 3 which started at 10:40AM.  There were lots of announcements in the tent for each wave.  It was either when people had to drop off their bags or when they needed to get to the starting corral.  It is amazing how I was so caught up in the logistics of the day and the weekend that the actual running of the marathon sort of took a back seat.  It was actually a great distraction.

At 9:20AM, I finally had to load my bag onto a UPS truck and then about 10:10AM we had to head to our starting corral.  You hang out in the starting corral for a 1/2 hour then.  The longest 1/2 hour ever!  They sang God Bless America and then the starting gun!  I was in the Green Wave which went on the lower level of the Verrazano bridge.  As we crossed the starting line, someone sang Sinatra's New York New York.  What an amazing moment.  Definitely gave me goosebumps.  I was next to this really loud group of people from France who started this rocketts like kick line to the music.  It was really obnoxious, but fun at the same time.  I mean at least I didn't get kicked.  And I was off and running!

Lisa