After a long tiring travel day and expo yesterday in the NYCM Day 1 post, today was going to be more relaxing and getting things ready for the run tomorrow. I was also signed up to run the Abbott 5k Dash to the Finish which I was going to be using as a shakeout run.

I didn’t have a great sleep, the room felt hot and the aircon was too loud for our 4yr old to sleep so we had to turn that off. It felt as though I wasn’t getting much sleep and waking every hour. My Garmin watch tracked 6 hours of sleep which seems optimistic to say the least.

My daughter woke up at 5:20, the jetlag getting the better of her, she was wide awake, with no chance of going back to sleep.

I left the hotel at 7:20 to head over to the United Nations for the 5k dash. On the way out, I bumped into an English lady who was running her 64th marathon and 12th New York City marathon. Pretty inspiring to listen to stories told by someone who has taken part in so many marathons over the years.

I walked with her to Times Square where went our separate ways. Mine to Starbucks to grab a latte to wake me up before the run.

Abbott 5k Dash to the Finish:

The plan for this race was to take it pretty steady and use it as my shakeout down. Around 8:00min/mile pace.

I was starting up near the front in Corral B with the faster runners.

Once the race got going I quickly got that everyone around me was aiming for a much faster time than mine. It was a case of letting them go and come by me and run my own race. It was more difficult this year to track my pace. The GPS was all over the place. I remember looking at my watch and seeing I was pacing at 3:03min/mile pace, no chance of that, especially on a steady run like this.

I crossed the finish in approx 23:40, slightly faster than I had planned but only by 1 min.

I got to see my wife and daughter at the side cheering on which was nice. They don’t usually come to these big international races.

“Relaxing” with a 4yr old:

After the 5k the plans were to relax as much as you can do with a 4yr old but also get some shopping done to free up time tomorrow afternoon.

We grabbed breakfast at Juniors Bakery before heading back to the hotel for a shower. I had earned a full pizza on the Strava Miles for Pizza challenge with New Balance, so I was hoping to head down there to cash in on that pizza but we had breakfast late and didn’t fancy lunch right away.

So the plans changed slightly to head off and do some shopping for a few items we wanted and then head to a Facebook group meeting in the park. This was good as I got to meet a friend I met at the Tokyo marathon, for a brief catch-up. I had to dash off early as my daughter wanted the toilet… Dad Life!

She stopped off at a playground in Central Park and had some good fun on the slides and then tried on Halloween masks in Wallgreens.

We grabbed a big 16″ pizza to take back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon lunch whilst sorting out my race day stuff. This was when I realised that I had forgotten to bring my race belt which has a pouch to put gels in.

Thankfully, I knew from my long training runs, that I was able to fit the required number of gels in my shorts pockets. Hopefully, they won’t fly out when I am running tomorrow, they had held up ok in training but there is always that doubt. Imagine losing all of your race-day nutrition a few miles into the marathon!

After sorting everything out, we spent a few hours in the hotel going over the plans for where my wife and daughter will go tomorrow to watch the race and hopefully see me. We ended up picking two spots, both in Manhattan on 86th Street & 1st Ave and then 90th st & 5th before heading around the park to 86th st & 8th to meet up with me post-race.

We then went out to get dinner but the jetlag and early morning got the better of our daughter. She was really tired and falling asleep in her dinner so we came back early.

Next up is a 4am alarm call and the same matter of 26.2 miles around the 5 boroughs.