The final day in New York. Another marathon weekend draws to a close as does the 2019 racing season for me. I now have no more races on the plan until 1st March 2020 and after a long season which pretty much began on the 27th November 2018 and went right through to yesterday, 3rd November 2019, it has been a long tiring year.

It is now time to take a few weeks off training, time to let the body recover and recharge the batteries for what is set to be a year with even bigger challenges than any year to date.

This is my fourth day in New York, you can see what we got up to in my DAY 1, DAY 2, & DAY 3 posts.

Today is pretty much a travel day, but not back to the cold, dark UK. Instead, we are flying to Florida for a few weeks in the sun and to take our daughter to Disney. The trade-off for me running the marathon was we have some quality family time here in Florida.

Morning in New York:

Monday morning in New York after the marathon is known as Marathon Monday. As with each of the last two years, I made my way up to the Marathon Pavilion in Central Park to get my medal engraved and have a look around the finisher gear. This time around, they had the finisher gear at the expo so I knew what I liked before coming up, I didn’t want to buy the finisher gear two days prior to running the race.

I had to set my alarm for 6am so that I could be at the Pavilion for 6:45am to queue to get in early. Our flight was at 11:15am so we wanted to get checked out and on our way by 8:45am.

Last night was the best night of sleep yet, no surprise really given the energy burned running the marathon.

The Marathon Monday was ok, getting there at 6:40am, I was still about 100 from the front of the queue but it soon went down with very little wait time.

I completed the paperwork for the engraving then went to buy a finisher tee whilst they engraved the medal.

I was back at the hotel at 8:00am and all ready to depart for Florida.

After a busy full-on weekend in New York, I was ready for a more relaxing time, Disney may not feel so relaxing but it will be fun.

Florida:

So this is the end of the New York update blogs. A mini-series that began at home, went to Manchester then New York and now ending in Orlando.

We arrived at 2pm and had a minor delay getting the pushchair after we went to baggage claim, not realising the chair would be outside the gate door.

The hire car was actually a lot more simple than I had thought, we were in the car and on our way really quickly, right on time for a torrential downpour. The hotel was only 25mins away. I was glad for the short distance, this was my first ever experience of driving a car abroad but no major issues on the way in.

Our hotel is stunning and the room is huge, especially after 3 nights in a New York hotel room.