The NYC Marathon was MY Boston. It is the race that I've wanted to do since I actually wanted to run marathons. PS. i flubbed it. But.... I will go back for seconds.

The Good. There is a lot of good.
The bad. its hard. (yes, marathons are hard, but these NYRR people throw some $**T at you!

Registration. Yes its a lottery. But generally speaking the registration process is pretty straight forward. If you want a poncho sign up early for it!
FYI, the NYRR site is not super mobile friendly, so i would recommend using an actual computer.

Communication: Race team communicates pretty frequently. I feel its mostly advertising for gear. Thankfully there was nothing epic / catastrophic going on that needed communicating. But I doubt that anything of that nature would have been missed. They did a good job reminding participants to sign up for transportation options.

The Expo: I have to say I loved the lay out. I could buzz in and out and not have to navigate vendors....but i love expos so I did.
The Expo was laid out well. I never felt crowded or herded at any point.
As a point of comparison, the flow felt off in Chicago, super crowded and had to walk through all the vendors to get my packet
Berlin--although it was the same as Chicago direction-ally, felt less crowded--but was maaaasive

The Course:
Epic.
First the start village and corrals were pretty amazing. Yes, there was kind of a refugee vibe going; but organizationally, this was so much better than Chicago (sorry chi-town.) I didn't feel like we were cattle. There were porto-johns everywhere! for 51K people there were really no lines.
I like the clothes collection idea which makes it a good option to ditch the sweats before the race in a sustainable way.

Starting on the Verazano bridge was neat, in and of itself, but the view was spectacular. I think it would be rough on a rainy day, but this year the weather was perfect-so the view was perfect and empowering. Yes there were people taking pictures... yes I wanted to be one of them... yes i was mildly resentful that they were stopping people from running by pulling out their phones and taking selfies.
but i'm not an elite and i'm not going to win my age group so i took it in stride.

The first 5 miles are really fast. mainly because you have a huge down hill coming off the bridge then you have the energy of the race. Mile 7 is where the crowds start picking up but there are people on the porches (or if you're from where i'm from, stoops) yelling for you once you're off the bridge.

The last 4 miles are rough from a rolling hills perspective (at leas that's my take on it.) there aren't sweeping changes in elevation, but coming out of the bronx it felt as if there was never a down hill...

The post race party.....
there wasn't one... there was another mile of walking....
the poncho is pretty legit though. its cozy and i like it =)

The swag:
the shirt is about average. nothing to write home about. You have to choose the poncho or bag drop which is a little rough if you're like me and do not generally have 'throw away' clothes. but i did it this year and got rid of some old pajamas. I did really like that pajama shirt though......

executive summary:
join me in 2019. i'll see you at the starting line.

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