This is the strap line for this year’s New York City Marathon. It is everywhere. I was running in Central Park yesterday and ran through the part of the loop road that is the final stretch of the marathon and there’s a vast amount of temporary building being erected for Sunday’s event. The park is looking particularly beautiful with the colours of the leaves changing nicely; it’s almost as if the park is putting on its best for the runners as the world watches them speed down the last part of the race.

Today I went to collect my race number for the 5k ‘dash to the finish’. I will not be dashing, but I will do my best as we start by the UN building on the east side and then run along 42nd street, past Grand Central Station and along to 6th Avenue and  up into the lower part of Central Park to end at the marathon finish line. Pretty cool to do that but not have to run 26.2 miles first!

Number collection was at the Javits Convention Center which is way over on the west side on 11th Avenue at 34th Street. It was so busy, but no surprise gieven there will be 50,000 people pouring through their doors over two days just to collect their race number.

I won’t be running, but I will volunteer like I did last year. This time however I am at the finish and will be one of 150 volunteers guiding runners and members of the public out of the park. Funneling 50,000 runners through the park and out onto the west side is a huge feat of organisation. When I ran yesterday, I followed the route that will funnel the runners and it goes on for 20 blocks! Blimey.

So wish me luck, standing around from about 11am to 6pm on Sunday, hopefully being vaguely useful. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain!