Big Time

I drove my course for the 2nd time today. Plus part of it was the 9-miler I did on Wednesday so I guess I feel as comfortable as I'm going to get with knowing where I'm going. I'll see part of the course again tomorrow morning when I drop off my Gatorade bottles. There's only one really complicated part but I drove that section twice today to make sure I had it down. Still, things are so very different on foot than in the car.

I'm happy with the course I mapped out. It's scenic. There aren't too many repeats so I won't get bored. It's runner friendly as far as traffic and sidewalks go, and it's relatively flat. There are some rolling hills in it but not anything hugely steep. Ideally I would have put at least one big hill in there but you can't have everything. Safety is my primary concern when I'm going to be out there for over 3 hours.

I did get a little dry-heavy on the drive thinking about the run. Part of it is nerves: I don't want to get lost and I need it to be a good run. Part of it is excitement: I can't believe I'm to this point in training and if I can do this run I should feel pretty confident about the 20-miler and the marathon. This is really real. This is what counts. I made a cheat sheet for tomorrow. It's LONG. Like, scary long.

Still getting all kinds of fun NYC marathon info. I found out I am not in the very last corral. I'm actually in the first corral of the last wave with 7 more corrals behind me.

Does it make that much of a difference? Not really. There will still be about 30,000 people ahead of me. It's not so much that I'll be way in the back that I'm worried about, my chip time is what counts, not the clock time (which will start at 9:40, over an hour before I'll get to the start line). It's that I don't want to be out there until 5 pm. If it's hot, I'll be in trouble. I should try to not give that too much thought though, nothing I can do to control the weather or how long it takes me to start.

They also posted the course map. Check THIS out. Somehow it doesn't look that bad on paper. I'm in the orange wave and I swear it looks like there's more distance in the beginning than the blue one. I'm going to use my running app that day and I'll find out exactly how many damned miles it is. If it's one foot over 26.2 I want extra credit.

Hopefully I'll have a great map and split chart to post tomorrow!