In the first of my NYC Marathon posts, I shared how we got to the run the race. I shared how the process worked and one of the things that they did differently this year is that they made you pick a time to go to the expo.
We picked to go between noon and 1pm on Saturday so that we would have plenty of time to get to NYC, rest up, etc.
We took the subway to the Javits Center, it was super easy from our hotel. We got there a little before noon, but they weren’t asking for your time so we were able to just go in. Once we got in, we were asked to show ID & Vaccination card, they gave us a wrist band and in we went.
As I mentioned in the initial post, in order to go inside of the expo you had to be vaccinated. They mentioned that if you were not vaccinated you were able to pick up your bib somewhere outside the convention center. I didn’t see where that was so I don’t where you went for that.
We took our obligatory entrance photos then went inside to get our bibs. Sean was in wave 1 so we picked his up first then got mine. Neither of us had a line so that went by pretty quickly.
Next up, was the race shirts. They had volunteers who had shirts that they were able to put up to our backs to see if they would fit. Sean was able to get his normal size. For me though, I normally go with a medium since the small typically runs very small. When they put the small up to my shoulders it was very very short so I had to go with a Large. The shirt design is nice but the quality of the shirt is a little lacking in my opinion.
Bibs secured. Race Shirts secured… Next up was heading to the New Balance Store portion of the Expo.
As soon as we walked into the store, we saw this lady taking a photo of her dog, who was the cutest thing ever posing in his running shoes & sunglasses.
Normally the race sponsor store is packed and the lines to check out are like an hour long (exaggerating but that’s how long they look) but it was not too bad when we were there. As I mentioned in my gear post, I went in big for NYC product this year and I picked up a super cute jacket and shirt.
There was a lot of gear to chose from and the lines to pay were super short. Once we got my gear, we walked out to see what else was in the expo. It was significantly smaller than normal. There were no other shoe companies there & just a few brands who I think were sponsors for the race. iFit, Gatorade, Jack Rabbit, KT Tape and a few other companies but that was it. We saw our friend Lauren, said Hi and then headed out. We were probably there for less than 30 minutes.
I have to say, it was really nice having less people in the expo, we weren’t running into people and didn’t have to wait in lines, etc. but I did miss seeing what all the brands have for the race.
Next up…the race!!
