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Right about now, the mind of Adirondack Marathon chief organizer Joel Friedman is filled with about a million things: and they all involve numbers.

Joel shared with us some of them on the eve of one of the biggest weekends in the Adirondacks, as thousands of runners and their friends and families will descend on our area over the next three days, for the 17th Adirondack Marathon Distance Festival.

Runners from at least 9 countries will be racing from : Australia, (Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oy!, Oy! Oy!), Brazil, Costa Rica, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Hong Kong and Finland.

There will be runners from at least 31 States represented.

There will be 7 runners from this year’s Boston Marathon,

There will be more than 700 volunteers from near and far.

Add to that multiple local and state agencies keeping the runners safe.

And -- while the numbers are still being tallied with late entries -- around 1,500 runners will most likely participate in the various runs this weekend.

And that’s not counting the dozens of meetings Joel’s had with his various teams and committees and the thousands of calls and emails he’s had over the last 12 months preparing for this big weekend.

And there’s one number he’d like to increase: getting more folks out along the route to cheer on the runners.

“I really wanna work next year towards getting more of our young people involved,” Joel told Schroon Laker.

This year, as in previous years, preparations have gone smoothly.

“We have a very well oiled machine and all of the team leaders and volunteers know the drill,” Joel said.

But as Joel learned this week, there are things that are often beyond his control. The medals for the runners arrived without ribbons attached. After they were returned, it took stops in California and Massachusetts before the problem was rectified and they arrived safely back here in Schroon.

Everything you wanna know about this weekend you can find here, on the Marathon’s freshly designed website.

Are you running or volunteering this weekend? Tell us about it in comments.