Why I ran the Philadelphia Marathon even though I ran a marathon in Pennsylvania before? As some know, I am trying to run a marathon in all 50 states. So in theory, it doesn’t make sense for me to run another marathon there. However, occasionally, there some states (like Virginia), I would run in again and again. Pennsylvania is also one of those states.
Short explanation of how come, is no reasons other than I wanted to.
The longer answer is more convoluted. Last year around this time, I ran the Atlantic City Marathon to have New Jersey done and met a guy there who said he wanted to do the Philadelphia Marathon this year. I said cool, I would join him. I signed up, hoping to meet him there again. I do have his contact. Anyway, he ran and finished, however, there were too many people, and so I missed him as he came in.
Philadelphia is not that far from me, about 3 hour drive on a normal day. However, nothing is really normal with me. I left for Philadelphia after work and it took more than 4 hours, in traffic. When I came back, I was also stuck in traffic because some freak accident in the DC area. Also I-95 is usually heavy in traffic. I think it took me 4 and half hour coming back. I was totally exhausted, not so much by the run but by driving.
What I did not mention was I made the same trip on Saturday because I went to cheer people who ran in the JFK 50. It was a lot of driving for me this weekend (probably 12-15 hours total in the car).
Overall, I love the event and my time there. My weekend was a busy one because I wanted to be in three places at once. In the end I settled for two. I went to watch the JFK 50 race on Saturday and skipped out of going to New York for a convention. We were blessed with good warm weather on both days.
I kind of wanted to run in Philadelphia for a long time, but I did not do it because very early on I had Pennsylvania met when I ran in the York Marathon. This is for running in all 50 States. It made no sense to me to repeat a state, but finally gave in.
I still wanted to do a run in Philadelphia for its historical significant such as the Liberty Bell and city hall.
There is also cultural significant. For me, it is the Rocky movie and for Philly cheese steaks. Unfortunately, I did not have time to stop in the Italian quarter (and the Philly cheese steaks at the finish were all sold-out). However, I did manage to secure myself a cheese steak hoggie in New Jersey the night before. I know, it is not the same, but was close enough, that it blew my tastebuds away. For context, last week, I had my physical, and my doctor recommended me to stay away from red meat…so I would have to follow my doctor’s advices soon and eat healthier stuff. Yes, I will start my dieting after this. Dieting always starts tomorrow.
In the mean time, that cheese steak was so good. It was like a once in a lifetime food.
When I started running a few years ago, I wanted to go to Philadelphia to do the Rocky 50K, where you run around the city and then do the rocky steps by running up the steps of the Art Museum like in the movie. Rocky 50 is a fatass, meaning it was not an actual race but an informal run where you are responsible for yourselves and there is no award and such.
The Philadelphia Marathon fulfill most of those wishes. I did not get to run up the steps, but I was there near the steps. There were antiwar protests going on, so I did not want to go near there to do the rocky run. Anyway, I was too exhausted after the marathon to climb any stairs but I did see some wandering up the steps.
We finished in front of the Art Museum. We were separated from the steps by fences. I don’t think the museum would be happy if ten of thousands of people decided to run up on its steps. But I was thinking it would be awesome if we get to run up them as a finish.
The marathon weekend came. I drove there Friday after work to pick up my bib. Hotels in the city were too expensive for me, so I stayed in New Jersey, the cheaper side, even cheaper than Delaware. Friday, I did not know where to park for cheap and paid quite a lot for parking near the city center ($30) and that was after-hour parking for couple hours. Normal hour is about twice of that. I was lucky on Sunday to only pay ($12) for the entire day in a decent lot near Drexel University. Initially, I was afraid my car would be broken in. There was one lot near a community college I initially planned to park where it was mentioned in a review that undesireable (zombies) people would hang out in the lot. Philadelphia has a homeless problem like any major US cities. I am used it in the DC area but seeing them in other places kind of scares me.
I stayed in New Jersey because it is cheaper. It has a bit of feel of being back home. I prefer staying in smaller towns. I think outside of Philadelphia would be cheaper too but it would require me to travel further north and west. New Jersey neighborhood does not seem to be that modern (or clean) either but my stay was comfortable and I felt safer.
Pretty much like any other marathons, I did not get much sleep the night before. I woke up every hour to check my clock. By closer to 4 am, I started to feel sleepy but I knew I wanted to get up at 4, so I could get into Philadelphia by 5. Usually this is the case, when I wanted to sleep I can’t and when I need to get up I feel I am about to sleep.
I already knew what I would be wearing. I picked them out few days before. The temperature was decent at 45 F and would go up to 55-60 (I think about 15C). It would get warm by noon. So Layering was the key. I had a T shirt as my base and put on a long sleeves and I decided to run in shorts. I knew I had a long wait time, so I would wear a sweater and sweat pants on top. I had on a wind breaker too, a head buff and pair of mittens. I decided to not to wear my hydration pack to make going through security easier. Don’t follow my advice here. I read online that some people experienced not receiving water at some water stations when they ran the half marathon the day before. It did not matter, many people brought their hydrations pack on. It did make it a bit easier for me of not wearing one. Less things to be checked when I went through security.
They fenced off the whole start and finish area. Those who entered inside had to go through security check at a gate. Apparently this was their first year doing it based on comments I read. This was one of the reasons to arrive early. Some people who arrived at 6:30 were stuck in long security queue and also long bathroom lines. Parking too was probably hard to find by then. Probably some missed the start because of the various delay of getting to their corrals. We had close to 13000 according to the organizer.
As for me, even though I left my hotel early, the entrances to the freeway were blocked due to construction and I had to use local roads to get across New Jersey. I had to fight with my google map direction because it tried to rerouting me back to various closed entrances. Apparently Google Map did not know about the closed roads.
I arrived in Philadelphia with no further issue once I crossed over the river. There was no traffic. The lot where I parked was already seemed to be full. I got a spot. I was just happy things worked out. Another reason I did not sleep well was I was trying to figure out the Philly train system and if I should use the train into the city. For me, driving ended up being a better choice. The race though recommended people to walk or use public transit. They also had shuttles from various points in the city.
Then I walked with the rest of everyone. It was easy to pick out people who were running the marathon. There were no other people walking around at that time but us. We all headed toward one direction. We all had our running gear. They gave us clear plastic bags for putting our clothes for the bag check and everyone was using them. You could spot runners with their clear bags from far away.
I got through security without issue. The check bag lines too were not that long. It pays to arrive early. I decided to take off my sweater and sweat pants and checked those in. It was nippy and so I had to keep moving to stay warm. A lot people were huddling and hunkering down. I believe the best things to do was to walk around. They had heated tents and VIP tents, but yes, you have to be part of them to use their tents.
Soon it was after 6 am and the start was about an hour away. Bathroom lines started to grow long. I knew there were bathrooms outside the security area where I passed earlier. I felt I needed to go but did not want to stand around waiting for a bathroom. So I went back outside the security check zone and indeed there were empty ones.
The security lines at various entrances were pretty long though. People were lining up several blocks away to trying to get in. Now it was about 20 minutes until the start. Some people started to run from entrance to entrance to find a shorter line. There was a sense of panic in me as to how would I getting back in. I came from northside (Art Museum), where when I exited earlier had no lines. Most people though arrived from east/south east side. So I walked back to the north entrance that was about a mile or even two away as the clock was ticking down. It was a long walk. The north side now had a few people forming a short line, which took me maybe five minutes to get through. The announcer even was telling people to move to the north side, but many people either think it was too far away or did not want to leave their places in the line.
The race itself was like any marathon I ran. I was placed into the 4:30 corral (purple) but I decided to move back two corrals to the (blue). There I found the 5:00 pacers. I know possibly I could run a 4:30 finish but I felt more comfortable if I run with the 5:00 people.
We had a clear bright and glorious morning. I entered my corral with thousands others. The race kicked off on time. By the time my corral crossed the start, it was 7:30. We were excited. They said there were 11000-13000 of us. Crowd support I felt was pretty good, and I think better than many marathons I did. The city felt very welcoming (unlike when I ran the Toronto Marathon or Baltimore). I was hyped and started pushing my pace early. Soon I was overheating and had to take off my long sleeves. The winds were blowing at a minimum. I could imagine how much colder this race could be. We traveled through the downtown, chinatown, Italian quarter, and out to somewhere in the suburb to the south. There was always something to look at. It was less busy. The corrals separated runners out well, so were not too crowded at any point unlike the Marine Corps Marathon where constantly there were sea of people running elbow to elbow.
We started going up some long hills by mile 10. Everyone ran up on the hills though. I guess the locals were used to this. We crossed back the river / railroad and the last 10 or so miles were an out and back along the river. My pace slowed down quite a lot by then. At mile 17/18 we saw the 3:15-3:20 people at their mile 24. They were amazing as their pace was so much faster than us. They were crushing the hills. We were running downhill. I knew they were almost two hours ahead of us.
I like the out-and-back not so much as running it but for seeing people, you could get to see the past people coming back as I headed out and on the return I get to see the slower people (the tail end). I was trying to spot my friend. On occasions, someone on the other side would stick out their hands for a slap or say something encouraging. I would do the same.
I ended up walking a few times. My goal was to not let the 5:00 people passing me since I started with them. So I ran when I could. At the last mile, we had people lining the street cheering. I finished at 4:41, almost 4:42.
It was a time I could live with. I wanted a 4:30 but I knew it was a bit hard to reach that day. Heck, I could even settle for a 5 hour. Even if I did not slow down in the second half, it was probably hard to hit it. I think I only lost 5 minutes in the second half. After checking my split, I slowed down about 10 minutes during the second half. My first half was 2:14. Yes, aiming for 4:30 was hard if not impossible at my pace, unless I could do an even pacing.
I stayed maybe an hour more to cheer people coming in. This was one race where a lot people stayed behind a bit to watch and cheer. It got colder for me. 50F was still pretty cold if standing still. So I left for warm food in chinatown and then drove home.
You alway learn something new. At this marathon, what surprised me was there were plenty spectators handing out tissue paper to runners. I ran for 7 years and this is something new to me. What do people do with tissues? To blow their noses! There were some handing out toilet paper too, but let leave that to imagination. There were piles and piles of tissue paper on the ground;) I thought that was interesting. I ran in colder races before and this was a first to see such as sight.
Also, this is the first time on quite a few occasions people moving from left to right or right to left without looking where they were going and bumped into me. There usually some jostling around but this was not it. I think the runner either seeing someone or something at the other side (like their friends) and decided to go from sideline to sideline to say hi. I guess I was not paying attention either. A few times, we had a bit of a close call of tripping each other and crashing to the ground. I am judging them for wasting their energy and not using it to running the tangent.
Philadelphia is a beautiful city for its buildings. At night though, the town is scary. This is my opinion. Locals probably don’t feel as unsafe as I was. I’d rather stay indoor. I guess it is like any major cities in the US, you just have to watch your surrounding.
In awe 