North Strides

What an amazing experience running in New York together with 55.645 other finishers, which makes it the world’s largest marathon ever! Here is a summary of my marathon day and some tips (at the end) for fellow runners. 

Sunday, the marathon morning kicked off the same way as my previous mornings in NYC with a wakeup at around 3am. My todo list for the morning at the hotel was:

1. Get coffee and hot water from the hotel lobby.
2. Prep and eat oatmeal porridge.
3. Check all equipment (incl a lot of clothes to keep before the start due to +3C weather) and add baby powder to my running shoes.
4. Attach the bib number to my shirt.
5. Get downstairs and have more coffee with oatmilk and an orange juice, which the hotel staff had kindly organized for me.

I was super happy with the service at Hampton Inn Times Square hotel. They were friendly and able to provide a cold breakfast package even at 4.30 in the morning according to everyone’s wishes (and a little bit more). Besides coffee and orange juice, I asked to get a banana, but got instead two bananas and two oatmeal bars which I took with me to Staten Island where the marathon started. 

If there is something to complain about the marathon experience, it is the transportation logistics. I was included in the third wave which had a start at 10.20 and the automatic transport suggestion for me was a 5.00 midtown bus, which was supposed to take 90 minutes but for us took only 45. When I got the suggestion, I didn’t yet know the exact start time, and thus decided to agree thinking that the organizers must have thought it through. Well, at least I don’t really feel it is a good idea to be outside sitting or standing on the ground for 4,5 hours before the marathon, so do consider your options early on with this one. The bus ride was smooth and we entered the start area through a security check and got free coffees from Dunkin Donuts. 

In spite of the super long wait, I was lucky since I had agreed with another Finnish woman, Sanna, that we would join forces and tackle this challenge together. What a relief it was to have company and a like-minded person to spend the time with! Travelling to a foreign marathon with a tour operator (mine was PWT Travels) offers plenty of positive sides, one of the most precious ones being the possibility to meet amazing people, so I definitely can recommend that. 

The waiting went better and felt shorter than I expected, and finally at 9.45am our corral gate opened and the start was getting closer. At this point I had already felt very cold for quite a long time in spite of the layers of clothes I had on me (see the picture). Thus, I gave my extra layers away only just before the start. A side note: Someone should design and sell long woolly socks that are easy to draw on top of your running shoes to prevent your toes from freezing. Together with Sanna we decided to aim at being more on the front side of our group to enable a smooth start for the run.

And what a start it was with the Verrazano-Narrows bridge and beautiful scenery. The marathon route continued from Staten Island to Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx before finishing in Central Park. I clearly hadn’t practised enough hills, but the first bridge was a joy as was the whole first half of the marathon. The best part of NYC marathon to me were the crowds across the city: there were not many kilometres without plenty of encouragement from spectators. Truly fun signposts (“the rats are not running the city, you are”) and getting your name shouted by strangers gave me such a boost whenever I felt tired (often). 

This was definitely not my best run. I felt far too tired (several nights with max 6h sleep wasn’t enough, and the long wait didn’t help) to get anywhere near my PB, but was happy to finish still under 4 hours (3:58). The mental tools I used during this marathon: 

• Thinking about how happy I am to be able to run a marathon in New York and how awesome the scenery is.
• Focusing on counting one kilometre by ten metres (990, 980, etc).
• Counting downwards from 1000 (I never managed to get under 900, since I always forgot about counting after seeing something fun).

Tips for New York:

1. Check your logistics as soon as you get the email and don’t take the earliest buses if you are not starting before 9.30am.
2. Plan your expo visit early. With the knowledge I have now, I would go there way before it opens (specifically if you are from Europe and anyhow wake up early).
3. On the marathon day, have more clothes on you than you think you need if the weather is below 5 degrees early in the morning.
4. If you can have something on top of your running shoes, use that opportunity. The shoes today are pretty thin and don’t offer enough warmth.
5. Don’t just sit down when waiting, but try to balance between keeping your body flexible and not stressing it too much before the start.

Extra tip for those with type 1 diabetes: I couldn’t trust my Libre enough during this marathon since it only showed me a blood sugar value two times during the run and otherwise no signal, so don’t plan everything on the basis of seeing the values regularly or seeing values in your Garmin through Libre LinkUp (didn’t work this time at all). I feel my condition pretty easily and was able to run safely also without seeing the blood sugar all the time, but this gave me extra stress which of course is not optimal from any perspective.

What is next on the agenda for me: Planning next spring’s marathons to run below 3:40 so that I can make it to Boston 2026.