United Airlines NYC Half Marathon: Race Plans, Part 1
Hey look, it's a race update!
I'm kind of in a weird semi-taper place right now. According to the plan, taper starts at about 7AM tomorrow, but tomorrow's tempo may become an easy run due to snow-related treadmill issues (I can't tempo run on the treadmill), and if that's the case, I'm probably already in taper. It's very confusing.
Anyway ... on to the exciting stuff.
Getting My Stuff:
Bib and shirt pickup will be Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the United Airlines NYC Half Experience Presented by New Balance, which is somewhere on West 18th Street. My office is on Broadway and 9th Street. So it's a little bit of a far walk, but close enough that I don’t know that I’d take the subway.
The "Experience" is open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so the plan is to go after work on Thursday. If I end up having plans that day, I’ll take a long lunch and head over then, but I’d rather go after work because that gives me more time to browse and see what’s going on (I don’t know if there will be vendors there or fun things or free stuff, so I want the time to get the lay of the land).
Outfit:
If you remember the outfit discussions from my last race, this will not surprise you.
The planned outfit for this race is …
If it’s too warm for that jacket, I have a plain white shirt that I wear (it’s actually underneath the jacket in the above picture). The outfit will then look a little something like this …
(Although probably still with leggings, not capris … just not sure what leggings because all of my black leggings are fleece-lined and that might be a little warm)
Side Note: This will be my last race in my current shoes, as they only have about 50-75 miles left, and my next race is a 4-miler (so I'll wear my short-run shoes). Not sure what I’m doing about my next pair of shoes … I don’t know if I should hold out and see if they’re coming out with the 880v8 soon or if I should just buy the v7. But whatever. I can wait a few weeks to figure that out.
Getting To The Race:
My dad will be driving me to the race. I’m in Wave 2, which means I don’t start until 8:15am. Bag Check closes at 7:35am, so I think I’m planning to show up around 7ish in case the bag check line is super long. I think I’m aiming to leave the house around 6:30ish.
The only thing I don’t know is if we will have to deal with road closures. I think it will depend on what route we take – there are definitely ways we can go that road closures won’t be an issue. I just have to hope that Waze understands the need to avoid Flatbush Ave (which is where I assume the road closures will be, as the race goes down Flatbush Ave).
Race Goals:
All goal discussion is currently preliminary, but the number that Coach DB gave me is 11:10 min/mile average pace (which also happens to be the average pace from the tempo portion of my last long run). If I’m doing my math right, that’s a time of 2:26:17.
My current half PR is 2:31:08. So if I can stick to (or at least close to) my planned pace, that’s a PR for sure. PR was not originally a goal for this race (although “PR for a race that includes Central Park” has been for a little bit), so … that’s nice.
We’ll see how it goes. I am probably going to want to take pictures during this race (which is why my original goal was very slow), but I think I should be able to do that without stopping, since I can just push a button on my phone and tell my digital assistant to take a picture. (I took a bunch of pictures during my Rangers 5K in November, and that’s my 5K PR, so I think I can probably take some pictures and run a PR at the same time.)
Post-Race:
Based on the map, there’s a lot of walking post-race. I don’t really have any plans for the day, so I’ll either get my medal engraved (see below) or just head home.
My usual post-half “breakfast” is an Uncrustable (remember … this is a judgement-free zone). But we’re out of Uncrustables and I don’t want to buy more right now. So … no idea what my post-race breakfast will be. But I will definitely head to Starbucks for my post-race latte. And I will use the bathroom at Starbucks. Even if I don’t feel like I have to. Because I only make the same mistake about 15,000 times.
Medal Engraving:
Like my last NYRR half, medal engraving is free for NYRR members (it’s also free for myNB Rewards Gold Members … so it’s like twice free for me). They’re doing it Sunday from 10am to 5pm, Monday from 12pm to 7pm, and Tuesday from 4pm to 7pm. Last time I went during the day on Monday, so there really wasn’t much of a wait. I don’t have that luxury this time. Since the race exit area is right near the NYRR RUNCenter, I might go post-race, but if I don’t feel like doing that, I’ll try to go after work on Monday. I know it’ll be crowded since a lot of people will be going after work, but … hopefully it won’t be too bad.
And finally, for those of you interested in my progress:
Track & Watch Me:
Once I have my bib number, I’ll post it here, along with a link for tracking.
There will be nationwide streaming of the race on ESPN3,WatchESPN, and the ESPN app from 7:00am to 9:00am. Don’t expect to see me on that.
There is also apparently a Find Your Finish camera, which is available live and on-demand on abc7NY.com (NYC) and ESPN3 (nationwide) from 8:10am to 11:10am. Not sure how that will work, but you might be able to see me on that.
So ... that's the update. I'll probably have some more mini-updates over the next week, and I may have a big update at the end of next week if anything exciting happens. Until then ... yeah.
like you said, just paint it (preferably while enjoying a delicious coffee) and voila!
