Fantastic day at the NYC marathon. Hondo & I ran this race in 2005, she finished, I didn’t. Fast forward nine years, I’ve won the lottery & get to give it another shot.
I took a bus to New York down from Boston early Saturday morning, the day after Halloween. The expo is near my hotel at the Javit’s Center – it’s massive, and most of the cool gear is sold out before I even get there (same thing happened to me at the Chicago Marathon). I do manage to find a sweatshirt that I rather like.
Down to the start ass early the next morning. It’s a half-hour walk from my hotel to the park where a mass of runners will catch a bus to Staten Island. Which, it turns out, is a frigid, freezing place to kill a couple of hours. If I ever do this again I will bring a tyvek windsuit. Given the temps I decided to run in shorts instead of tights, which is great during the race but utterly miserable waiting for the start.
The race begins over the Verranzo Narrows Bridge. I’ve dumped my sweatshirt and warm hat well before crossing the start line – in retrospect this was a mistake. It’s *incredibly* windy up here on the bridge – I’m buffeted so strongly I have to take my (non-warm) hat off lest I lose it over the edge.
The first phase through Brooklyn is fairly quick. The sun peeks out for the first time at mile 4.5 and the cold stops being an issue after that. What it remains though is the wind, which remain throughout the race (particularly on the bridges). I see my people cheering for the first time at mile 8 or so and am feeling pretty good.
Things are going more or less fine up through Brooklyn and Queens until around mile 16, coming across back into Manhattan, a long slow bridge run without support. My pace here creeps up. There’s a huge crowd of people when we first get off the bridge, but they’re not really lifting me up the way I had hoped, and my pace stays slow. Most of the next three miles up through Manhattan into Harlem I’m busy psyching myself out thinking about my previous attempt at this race which failed in right about this location. I’m hurting and tempted to walk a little but don’t, settling for a slow pace instead. At mile 19 I convince myself I’ve missed the Bylers at our 2nd location but finally see Steven first and then the rest of the crew, cheering on the left side.
Once I’m in the Bronx I know it’s a quick turnaround then south to home. My cheerers are at mile 22 again, I just feel like crying and dying here. My pace climbs above 9:00 here, and above 10:00 at mile 23, where unfortunately it stays. The last four miles are some of the prettiest parts of the course, coming down into Manhattan along and through Central Park but I am not appreciative as one might ought to be.
I came through the finish with a final time of 3:50:54. This is not a particularly fast time for me, but it’s sub-4, and given how wobbly I feel through the medal shoot I’m going to take it and be happy with what I have. Such an amazing contrast how much worse I feel with a 12 minute slower time than three weeks ago in Hartford. I eventually end up in a medical tent where I sit for a half hour or so while the medical staff determines my enzymes are not messed up enough to merit real attention. Off I go back into the wind to find my people, celebratory pretzels and (eventually) a beer or three.
So that was that, my NYC Marathon experience for 2014. Not my fastest, my best or my strongest. But definitely the one I’ve waited for the longest. I’m glad to have done it, and very glad that Christine, Steve & the boys were there to help me make it through it.