NYC marathon - like running in an oven

What I learned: Training is a good thing. Heat is a bad thing. Starting in the front is really cool. In a pinch, salt packets taste pretty good. EZ laces can be dangerous.

The NYC marathon the second time around was a little more interesting than the first. I knew the course. I didn't know anyone on it. I had friends to wait with at the start, and ran into friends I didn't even know knew how to run (Amanda Freeman, I am so impressed!).

Ilse and I left her house at 5:20, with the doorman saying "gonna be a hot one" as we walked out the door. We headed for the subway on W 96th, but saw a cab on the way and grabbed it. He drove us all the way to 42nd Street and 5th, where we caught the bus to Staten Island. Seamless and fast (total opposite of stressful experience last year) - we were on Staten Isl by 6:15 a.m. Only 3:55 to wait. It was freezing cold, and there was nothing to do but sit around and wait. Wait in the porta-potty line, wait in the bagel line, wait in the drop clothes line, etc. Both Ilse and I had a seeded number, so we got to go wait in a "special tent" (inside! warm!) until they lined us up - there were even special porta-potties, but we didn't know about this in time.

Around 9:30 or so they fed us onto the Verazzano-Narrows bridge, where we waited some more. The elite women took off at 9:35, but we couldn't see them from where we were. It was still freezing, and we held out hope that the weather forecast might have been wrong. Nope. 10:10, cannon goes off, and the skies parted - out comes the sun. Right before the start, I peeled off my favorite warmup pants (target, but I still loved them) and a ratty tshirt, and we were good to go (I'll leave out the parts about peeing ON the Verazzano-Narrows bridge...let's just say we were not alone, we had half of the NYPD force watching us, and a cadre of 30,000 runners coming towards us).

All told, NYC has 37,000 runners - insane by any account. It is flawlessly organized, and goes off without a hitch. Mayor Bloomberg shot the cannon, and off we went. We were running immediately, and I was across the start in 20 seconds (last year it was 8 minutes).

Awesome first part of the race - I hit 7 miles in 60 minutes flat (I felt awesome about this until I heard my colleague Steve ran a half marathon in 65 minutes on the same day, in Big Sur. He won. Jesus.) The heat was intense, and I only had 16 endurolytes with me - enough for 4 an hour, which I thought would be more than adequate. By mile 10 I was coated in salt, and knew they would never be enough. Fortunately the medical staff was handing out salt packets, and I grabbed some in Brooklyn (I ate one and then stupidly put the rest into my shirt back - guess what? they disintegrated!). Spent most of Brooklyn looking for my friend Krista - knowing she wasn't there, but it kept me entertained nonetheless.

Hit the half in 1:54 - still not bad, and my hip felt pretty good. Right before the half some guy clipped my heel, and my foot came flying out of my shoe (thanks to my ez laces) - I ran 3-4 more steps before I could slow my momentum down. I screamed, hit him (poor guy), and then had to turn around and run BACK INTO the 37,000 runners (ok, probably 30,000 behind me) to retrieve my shoe, and put it back on, keep running. I still hit sub-9 for the mile - not too shabby.

Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan is around mile 15-16, and is also where I began to fall apart (here's where the training would have come in handy). I started to see spots, which I knew was a very bad thing, and I knew I needed to get even more sodium into my body. My friend Keith was supposed to be on First Avenue between 68-69th, so I convinced myself I could hold it together until I got to Keith, and then slow down. 68th came and went. 69th, same. 70th. etc. No Keith. I started to cry. A few blocks later there were more medics, so I grabbed more salt (they tried to give me one packet - I doubled back and asked for (ok, greedily grabbed) five. They shouted at me and said "get her number!!" I ran away, happy with my salt, still crying about Keith.)

Around mile 20, and nearing the bridge into the Bronx, my friend Diana passed me, on fire and looking amazing (she went sub-4 that day!). I crossed into the Bronx and mile 21 and ran into Ilse, who was also not very happy. We tagged back and forth for 2-3 miles, and then lost one another again. I bargained with myself, walked, jogged, shuffled, stretched, and was generally in a large amount of pain for the last 5 miles. Fifth Avenue is much more uphill than I remembered. At that hurts. A lot.

Once in the park, I again started looking for friends - this time for Todd, but I couldn't remember which side of the road he said he'd be on. Didn't find him, but again, at least it gave me something to think about. People were sprawled, ala Wildflower 2004 (the hot year), all over the side of the road. I saw a guy who looked dead. I saw people puking. I licked my gel canister to get a little more salt and considered myself lucky. I kept shuffling. My friend Ryan went blazing by with his girlfriend Elizabeth; he waved hello and shouted and I mustered a smile, knowing I was pretty close to the end. I wanted desperately to walk in the park, but the crowds are so intense that if you even look like you are considering walking, they scream and holler and make you start running again. So I did, keeping shuffling, head down, trying to make it through.

I finished in 4:12:08 - not too great, but altogether respectable given the weather and lack of preparation (my longest run was 12 miles, and I was even in bed for a day with a thrown out back after that). If I could ever get my ass in gear and TRAIN and stay healthy for a marathon, who knows what I could do?

I can safely say that I was in more pain at the end of this race than I have ever been in my entire life (except maybe the high school race where I had a fractured pelvis...that was pretty bad). It hurt worse than Ironman. Much worse. I wanted to cry at the finish but I was afraid people would think I was overcome with the emotion of the finish and that's kind of lame (always concerned about the image, how shallow is that.) Still, NYC is the absolute best marathon in the entire world. The cheers, the crowd, the organization. And a fall finish in Central Park. There's nothing like it in the world. I'd do it again in a second.