Philadelphia Marathon 07

The Philadelphia Marathon was a whirlwind tour. The idea came together quite quickly and the arrangements ended up being taken care of for me. All I had to do was sign up for the race and then show up at the meeting place for the ride down.

The drive turned out to be a total of about 10 hours with car swaps and stops for lunch and bathrooms (everyone knows how marathoners are the day before the race). We stopped for lunch in some small town and ended up having the most wonderful time in a local restaurant. Next stop was getting to the expo in time to have a look around and pick up some deals while we were there.

The expo turned out to be quite a dud. With only around 40 vendors and no real corporate vendors, it was hard to justify the lineups. Good thing we didn't have to pay for parking. Now it was off to find our hotel and then to our dinner reservations.

Finding the hotel turned out to be a problem. Our directions weren't specific enough (or maybe they were and we weren't specific enough in reading them?). We ended up passing within a block of our hotel about four times before actually finding it. We parked, checked in and then were off to dinner. Dinner turned out to be a wonderful Fine dining Italian restaurant. We had a large group so it was a bit of an endeavour for the servers, but they got it done. Conversation was great and it was really great to meet new people.

After dinner it was back to bed to get a good night's sleep before the early morning start of 7am?

The walk to the start line wasn't bad at all. Maybe a 10 minute stroll along with all manner of runners in their pre-race garb. I saw people in singlets with garbage bags and I saw people who were fully dressed in steamer coats, pants, mitts and hats. There were going to be all sorts of runners in this race. As we walked you could feel the excitement and anticipation in the air. The bag check was on the other end of start area from where we were approaching and it seemed like we had to weave through all 18000 runners to get to it. What a crowd.

After checking the bag, we made our way to the start line and tried to line up in the general area of where we should be running. It turned out that we were on the Half marathon side of the street but we could see the 3:40 pacer sign, two lanes over. We figured we would start close to the middle of the 4 lane road and then just cross over to the marathon side after we passed the start line. This worked out really well because the marathoners on their side of the street were packed like sardines but we had a tonne of room to tie our shoes and do some last minute stretching.

The race course weaved through some older parts of town as well as some very developed areas. We crossed the river a few times, we went by the zoo and many other major landmarks. One beautiful thing about pacing in this marathon was that they have clocks at every mile marker. I took advantage of this and ended up stopping at each mile and taking a picture of the clock just for fun. The halfway point of the marathon brought us back past the start/finish line for the HM finish. It was great to see how many racers were carrying on to do some more.

The second half of the marathon was basically an out and back along the banks of the river. With no majors hills in this section of the course, the biggest challenge was the Manayunk Mile (and a half) which was a rise and a fall and then back again. There was a lot of support on this section and it really was a highlight (especially the beer toting volunteers, I wish that pic had turned out). It was really nice to then be heading back into town and going what seemed like down-river, which also meant downhill. The final two miles really were a pleasure to run because of the crowd support. There were people lining both sides of the street for most of the way in and I heard many calls of "Go Boston!" since I was wearing my BM shirt.

The finish line was great and there were plenty of volunteers to help wherever I went or turned. Now the question was...How long would it take me to get back to the hotel? or should I go out for some more miles???

One thing that was neat about Philadelphia was that the organizers were using a new system of timing chip, the new SAI timing device. Instead of the standard chip that you pick up before and return in the finishing chute after the race, they were using a new plastic strip much like the one used in No-Go's in retail stores (or like the little metal strip found in DVDs). The 3 inch strip started as a sticker that was attached to your bib and you just peeled it (making sure not to bend it as warned) off and tied it into your laces. Really kind of neat, and it would make a great scrap book souvenir. I still would like to know how many of them failed to register as it seemed that they had trouble updating and releasing people's times after the race. Most of our marathon finishing times weren't available until late in the evening Sunday night. One of our group even had her time estimated via her finish line photo and didn't get an actual chip time (as far as I know).