48 hours to go to the start of the New York City Marathon, and I have caught the bug! No, I’m not sick, although my wife and Katie (my 8 year old) are. I think they got sick from me, so I’m safe! The bug I’ve caught is the super excitement of what may be the greatest mass participation sporting event out there! The city is really transforming this week into marathon mode, and yesterday I headed to the expo to take part!
On a side note, when I checked my RSS feed this morning, I *already* had 4 completed marathon expo reports! Wow, I’m behind the times! Check out their great blogs…
Don’t have time to go into full details, but I had a lot of fun. The only complaint that I do have about it (its human nature to complain about something, right!) is that the exhibition space is relatively small (the Austin Marathon exhibition space was almost as big), with much of the space is taken up by the big name vendors, Asics, Nike, Foot Locker, Garmin, Timex, Polar, Saucony, Poland Spring, Gatorade, and so on. There were not a whole lot of the smaller vendors with more interesting items. Yes, there were some, but just not enough! I think that is why I liked the Austin Marathon expo so much, because there was a greater mix of bigger vendors and smaller vendors. Here, many of the smaller vendors were actually a subset of the large Paragon section.
Anyway, expo really was great overall, and I picked up lots of stuff, including:
- tech tee
- White cap
- Heavy gloves
- singlet
- long sleeve under layer
- throwaway jacket
- light gloves
- Amphipod
- Socks
In short, I went hog wild! Here are the pictures I got on my phone:
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- Lifesize Asics map of the course
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- Full Asics list of Hello Goodbye
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- My bag of stuff
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- Grete signing autographs
My favorite ‘swag’ item is the Timex refrigerator magnet where you can punch out the pieces of a digital clock grid to show your finishing time, just like a real digital race clock!
In all, spent about 2 hours wandering around, very tiring work. Was also able to meet up with Michelle and chat for a few minutes.
Can’t wait for Sunday and will try and write up some final thoughts beforehand.
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I LOVE the magnet! Can’t wait to peel off my time!
good luck this weekend!
Good Luck at the marathon! The NYC Marathon seems to have as much publicity and attention as any other marathon. I’ve never ran it, but hopefully when I get to New York on the list, I’ll be able to do NYC. Everyone I know says it’s one of the great marathoner experiences.
Best of luck in your race!
I agree, the magnet is my fave also. My nerves are so frazzled right now – not even meditative yoga is helping lol. Good luck on Sunday, it’s going to be a FANTASTIC day!
p.s. thanks for the shout out and what’s your start color/wave? I’m blue/wave 3.
Funny you should ask! I’m actually in the same corral – #44138!!
Sweet, I’m 44408, although I’ll probably go back to the 53000’s to run with the 4:45 pace group. I’m sure our paths will cross in the start village.
Hey – thanks for the mention and stopping by the blog. Such great excitement at the Expo.
Does anyone have an extra Timex refrigerator magnet? I would like to post my 2008 time in addition to my 2009 time on my fridge – thank you!