ING NYC Marathon confirmation

(Sorry about the "grainyness" of the above image. It was really small when I had to cut and paste it from the website)

For a while now, I've had a goal to experience all of the large marathons in and around the United States to see how I liked them and just to be able to say that, "oh yeah, I've run that one...it was fun!" This year seemed like a perfect year to be able to swing in the NYC marathon.

It was a nice flat, fall marathon. Sounds perfect after Ironman Lake Placid and will give me adequate recovery time. (I ran Philly in the fall of 2007 after doing IMLP that year too) So I did a little research and wanted to see if it was possible to get into the 2009 ING NYC Marathon.

Turns out it is a lottery system because so many people apply each year to run it. But the nice thing is that if you can hit them, they have automatic qualifying standards. For my age group you just had to run a sub 2:55 marathon within the past year and a half. Tomorrow is the cut off for registration for auto-qualifiers, so if you are thinking about it, do it today!! :o) I got an auto qualifying time by running a 2:53 in Boston last year and just snuck under the standard and into this race.

I just got my confirmation email and my name will appear in the participant lists soon :o) My goal for this marathon is to PR, but seeing as how that is sub 2:53, that might be tricky. We shall see though. I still think I am capable of a sub 2:50, so only time will tell. Wish me luck in the fall, but for now it's still prime time for Ironman :o) Sit back and enjoy the show ladies and gentlemen. This year in Placid, there's BOUND to be some fireworks! Cheers and JFT folks, I gotta run...