I loved this race and felt lucky to get to do it!
I mentioned that I was a total idiot in the Long Beach Marathon and missed a turn! I ended up only doing the half, so I needed to find some other full marathon to do before the end of 2015.
And now that I’m working on the east coast, I started looking around for what was out here.
Philly’s within easy bus distance of NY. I wrote in to a few races, and this one gave me a free race entry! (Yay blogging!)
I went down the day before, got my packet at the cool expo, then checked into the Le Meriden hotel (which I ending up loving so hard – I always want to stay there, when/if I go to Philadelphia again).
I walked through the middle of City Hall to get to CVS. (There’s a big outdoor courtyard-type place in City Hall. So in just getting around the city, you can always be walking around City Hall, which I think is pretty super cool.)
I got my pre-race fuel (chips and salsa – my favorite pre-race food) and some headphones (since I’d forgotten mine). Then I headed back to my hotel room.
On race morning, the hotel put out fruit for the runners. (Did I mention I love this hotel?) I walked down toward the start. There was a station set-up where spectators were making signs, which I thought was very cute.
Some runners had a mini-freakout at the security line because it was loooooong – like really long – like people were afraid they were gonna miss the race start long. I guess because of the recent Paris attack, security was beefed up. But somehow, someway, everybody got through.
I mentioned that my hands were cold, and a runner out of blue overheard me and gave me an extra pair of gloves, which I thought was exceptionally sweet.
Once the race started, I heard the Rocky theme song an almost uncountable number of times, which I thought was pretty fun! (It’s also an exaggeration. Legitimately, I probably only heard it about six times on the course.)
I got to run all around Philly landmarks. It’s a fun city – and a small one at that. We ran through a suburb as well.
Toward the end, I got pretty slow and it was tough. (I have not been training as much as usual since moving to New York! Oof.)
But the thing that was so nice was that I’d had all these mini-failures (a hard time with various things at the beginning of my job, a couple of “failure weekends” where things went wrong, etc.). And it was so nice to know, “I am doing this! I am strong! I am completing a marathon! It’s happening!”
After the end of the race, I got my sweet, sweet medal with the liberty bell. And I went to the top of the art museum steps for my Rocky photo (at the top of the this post). (I also got to meet the very sweet Philly marathon staff in a tent before I went up the steps. Thanks again. I loved this race!)
Then I had a fantastic vegan Philly cheese steak at Blackbird Pizzeria. (It was a glorious day.)
And then I just stayed in Philadelphia for a week, which we will get to next!