 And you better believe we're packing this all. See you in the studio. Hi, Seth. And I'm packed and ready to go. Here we go. The Big Apple is calling my name, decided to sport the Five Bridges T-shirt today as I prepare to. Actually, when you're watching this Friday morning, there's a good chance I'll be up in the sky, flying to New York. So it's getting very, very real very quickly. And I'm very excited about my race strategy that we talked about in yesterday's vlog where you all made the guesses for what time, if you haven't seen it, and you wanna make your guess, go back to yesterday's vlog. I'll try to remember to link to it, upper right hand corner, where you can make your guess. If you guess down to the exact second, you win a free pair of running shoes, so we shall see. And yes, we're gonna talk about my racing kit here in a minute. Some changes are being made from Amsterdam. But before we dive into that, I'm asking for some help. First of all, I have a little trick up my sleeve, a little surprise for the New York City Marathon. I'm not gonna talk too much about it, but you'll just have to come back Monday morning for the surprise with respect to how the vlog transpires here on YouTube. But I do need your help. So in Amsterdam, I was beyond impressed with the crowds. I thought the crowds were very supportive, very loud, and pretty consistent throughout the course. Now there were some spots where it was quiet, but I've heard New York City, it just doesn't get any better than New York City. So two million people approximately come out to cheer along the course. That is the estimate that they give, which by the way, again, from what I've heard is the biggest crowd size for a sporting event in the world for any sport. Am I crazy saying that? Because you think of NASCAR, where what do they have like 200,000 fans around the track? You think of the Super Bowl, you think of maybe the World Cup, but I'm talking at one event where they're lying, now I realize it's spread out over 26 miles, but I'm beyond excited to just soak up the neighborhoods in New York, but here's where I need your help. Could you, if you're out there on the streets of New York, could you pull out your phone or your GoPro or maybe your DSLR camera like I have right here and get a, if you see me, now I realize there's gonna be a lot of people on, yeah, there's just gonna be a lot of people, but if you do see me and you get a clip and you email it to me on Sunday, I will put it into the vlog the next day. So by Monday morning, you know I publish every day, it'll be in the vlog, but my email is listed down below or you can send me the clip via Dropbox or Google Drive. That would be amazing. I would love to include your creativity. You could get a shot of yourself and your friend, like whatever the case may be, just film whatever. Maybe film some of the elite men and elite women that run by you, anything, anything. So that would be cool. Okay, moving on now to Amsterdam. Oh, Amsterdam. I think I mentioned this briefly after the race in Amsterdam in the hotel room. Just briefly, I was in a lot of pain. Like it was very, it was going beyond my, my lactate threshold early in the race set my legs up for a lot of pain. But in addition to the quads just being completely trashed, my feet kind of hurt, actually. So I, as you, many of you know, I raced in the night, not in these actually, they're inside, but the Nike Vaporfly 4% Flyknits 10 millimeter drop. And historically, my feet have been my, kind of my Achilles heel as far as injuries in the past, you know, my stress reaction that I had in April. I've had surgery on my right foot for plantar fasciitis back in college. That's a whole nother story. I've just had some niggles and pains throughout my life in my feet, actually in middle school. I had, I had plantar fasciitis in one of my heels in middle school. So it's kind of plagued me my entire life. Because of my history, I should have maybe not been surprised that by mile 20, it was around mile 20 in the Amsterdam Marathon. And again, I'm transitioning from trail racing to marathon racing on the roads. My feet were hurting pretty good. They were hurting pretty good. I, there's no other way to say it, but maybe everyone's feet are hurting at 20 miles in a fast road marathon. I don't know, but my feet were kind of barking at me. Maybe it was the combination of not being used to the pavement, the carbon fiber plate in the 4% and what else? Going fast, maybe going, you know, going a little too fast, who knows? I'm not like, it's water under the bridge. But because of that, of course, I am going to switch to the Nike next percent. Where is it? There it is. So here's my Nike next percent. Why am I switching? First of all, the midsole cushion, there's more of it. Oh, don't quote me, but I believe there's 15% more ZoomX foam in this midsole, which I'm hoping provides just a little more cushion to the ride to save my feet later in the race. So that is my decision on the shoes for the 2019 New York City Marathon. I'm switching from the 4% to the next percent. And yes, okay, just real quick, 10 millimeter drop in the 4%, eight millimeter drop in the next percent. And yeah, maybe just like a little slightly less drop will help alleviate some of that, maybe pressure on my four foot. So we shall see. Okay, moving on now. Let's talk about shorts. That is right. So in New York and Amsterdam, I raced in my John G shorts. I love these shorts. These are the most comfortable shorts I may have ever owned except the pocket. So there's only one pocket in these John G shorts spelled J-A-N-J-I. It's a zipper pocket here in the back, okay? And this is a company based in Massachusetts, somewhere near Massachusetts in near Boston, I believe. So I love the pocket for training, but not so much for racing. Having to deal with a zipper in a race? No, no dice. So my new strategy is that here we go, opening up my new box of Hydro Gel Sports Fuel, gel 100 from Morton. There they are. Oh, butter it, butter it, butter the bread. So we've got the gels for the 2019 New York City Marathon. Let me just pull out the gels here. Here's the deal. I'm switching from the John G shorts. So I'm not gonna have bottles along the course. Remember in Amsterdam, I couldn't find one of my bottles at the halfway point, which was very difficult mentally. And it was hard at 505 a mile, at least the first half of the race, to find my bottle amongst 30 to 40 other bottles. So I'm not even gonna deal with it. I'm just gonna get the water, get the Gatorade. It's like this endurance Gatorade from the stations. It's maybe not ideal, but at least unless you're an elite athlete where someone's handing you the bottle, I think I learned a lesson in Amsterdam. It just turned into kind of a lot of negotiation at the eighth stations. I expended a lot of mental energy and even physical energy. I won't get into details, but bottom line, I'm switching to carrying my gels with me. I'm not gonna risk it like I, I didn't risk it in Amsterdam, but it just didn't pan out. Well, I don't know if you can see it here, but on the inside of these, yes, Nike, I believe these are the, yes, the Nike Aeroswift shorts, of course, they're bright green and they have four pockets, four pockets. So here's the front of the shorts. There's the drawstring. You can see my fingers, hopefully pointing into the shorts. Hopefully you can see those pockets there. So let me see if I can just slide one in for you all. So there it is and there we go, got it in. So there it is in the, in the pocket right there. So I'm not gonna risk not being able to grab my gels and I'm actually beyond excited to be able to have a gel whenever I want, whenever I have a low point, just pull it out of my shorts and put it back. Now I'll probably wanna, you know, try and time it near an eighth station to wash it down a little bit with some water, but actually these go down pretty easy for me. So yes, I will be carrying my four gels with me. I'll also take a gel right at the starting line, probably like 20 to 30 minutes before the race, just to get it going in the system. So there you have it. Those are my two major updates for the racing kit between Amsterdam and New York. I think they're overall smart, like my feet hurt in Amsterdam a little bit and so I'm gonna switch to a shoe that has more midsole cushion. I couldn't get a gel in Amsterdam at one of the eight stations because I couldn't find my bottle and so I'm gonna kinda eliminate the little factors that add up to huge issues later in the marathon, like just these little things along the journey of a long race that add up to kind of bigger mistakes later in the race and your body might pay for it. So I'm just trying to eliminate all these little factors and even like not having to deal with the bottles and I know drinking out of cups at aid station is not as easy. You gotta pinch the cup and put back as much as you can but it was hard. It was just hard. There's no other way to say it, to grab that bottle off because the aid stations, there's people handing the cups, okay? So you don't even have to kinda go off the course a little bit, grab your bottle, kinda come back. Anyway, I could go on and on. I learned, this is why we do this. This is why we got YouTube so I can share experiences but also so you can share experiences down in the comments about just those little lessons along the path of becoming a better runner and that's what I hope to achieve on Sunday in New York City. So question of the day, who else is racing this weekend? What distance, where is it at? What's the name of the race and who else is racing the New York City Marathon? Extra kudos to you down in the comments. That would be amazing, give them the love and okay, vlog is not done. Time for pizza and time for a little trick or treating. Oh yeah, there it is, three large pizzas. It's going down, time to kinda work on that glucose if you know what I mean. Here we go. Two, three! Yeah! He's happy trick or treating first time. All right, you come walk by. There's Lucy, there's Michael. Do you want some candy? You guys stuck something stuck on your shoe. Happy birthday. And there you have it, happy birthday Lucy. We love you and yes, it was an epic year. Epic year of trick or treating when you walk back in the house and what is on your foot? A sucker, that's right. That was Michael's first year of trick or treating. He did good, he pulled out all the stops, but walking back in the house with a sucker on his foot. That was hilarious, but we love you guys and the next time you see me, I will be in the Big Apple, New York City, I can't believe it, we're hitting the road tomorrow. So thanks for being here, thanks for watching and yes, we're gonna toss it back to the Nike Next Percent first impression vlog from, gosh, probably three months ago now on the right and then on the left, if you wanna go see an old Halloween vlog from, we'll maybe toss it back a couple years ago, that'll be on the left. All right, love you guys, see beauty, work hard and love each other. See you tomorrow.