NYC Marathon done been run!

November 21, 2007 by karen

I wanted Alex to write the marathon post since it was his first marathon and I thought he would give you a fun perspective, but he’s been so swamped at work lately, it doesn’t seem like that’ll happen anytime soon. So here goes:

We finished the marathon! Yay! Which you probably already know from browsing flickr. This is us crossing the finish line. I love, love, love this photo. We look ridiculous—probably because I made Alex practice this finish with me for the last five months.

Now that you have all breathed a sigh of relief that we finished, let’s rewind to the early, early morning the day of the marathon.

We woke up around 4:45 a.m. so that we could catch a bus organized by the Brooklyn Road Runner’s club from our neighborhood. The bus left Park Slope around 5:30 and arrived at Fort Wadsworth at 6:15. We must have been with the first 100 runners of 38,000 that arrived because the place was empty.

We found our starting corral (BLUE!), set up camp with a painting drop cloth and a blanket and rested up for a bit. When we woke up about 30 minutes later, it looked like a cross between 28 days later and Woodstock. People were everywhere, wearing some of the most unusual getups one could imagine.

Around 9 a.m., an hour before race time, people started really getting ready for the run. We lubed up our toes and the rest of our bodies with Vaseline in hopes to avoid blisters and chaffing (too gross for the blog?).

And then we headed to our corral’s start area. Here are all our blue running friends.

This is when things started to get really exciting. Everyone’s ripping off their warm clothes and stripping down to shorts and tanks. I’ve never seen so much wasted clothing in my life. I was happy to find out that thousands of pounds of clothes are cleaned and donated. Alex, being the classy guy he is, found a discarded tin of Vaseline for some last minute lubing.

The next thing we knew, the cannon went off and we were starting. It took us about eight minutes or so to get to the starting line. We had to run through the toll booth area on the Verrazano bridge first, which is a very strange concept when on foot. Here we are ready to go!

Alex brought a disposable camera along for the run, which was great because he captured a bunch of the moments along the race like:

On the Verrazano Bridge. Alex took a leak here that he described as “breathtaking.”

Bay Ridge. We spotted our first fan and two-time marathoner, Rob Schellberg here.

Down to Park Slope. Hey look, it’s the Human Hair Happy Hour Folks: Sara, Freya, Daya, Micah, Katie and Murph! Thanks for the signs, Sara and Daya! A few more strides down and we spotted Rob and Sarah. Check out this video Murph took of us!

Near Park Place with spotted Momma Vicky with her skyscraper sign.

Through Fort Greene we found these awesome signs, courtesy of Dennis and Kevin. Photo by Yougna who was busy taking this picture so we missed her :(. The crowds in Fort Greene were awesome and super loud. Choirs from the neighboring churches were singing on their church steps. The energy from the city was really amazing.

Around mile 12 we met up with Marisa, Vinny and Gabe who brought along our mid-race salt packets, gels, starburst and a towel and took a stretching break and then crossed over the Pulaski Bridge. Check out how crowded it still is at mile 13!

Ah, the hated 59th street bridge. I could safely say we were still feeling groovy at this point, but it took a long time to get around other runners. The NYC marathon is a big race, everyone knows that, but I don’t think we realized how hard it would be to navigate space for the two of us on the road. We were constantly looking back over our shoulders to make sure we had both found a way to pass a group of runners (aww!).

On to first Avenue at mile 16 (10 more to go!) we spotted the Bonnas and the Cummings. This was our last planned family lookout. That, paired with the 16 miles we already finished, made the upcoming miles start to feel a bit less exciting… We headed up 1st Ave for about 4 miles. I think we were doing fine, chugging along; Alex worked through a foot cramp with multiple salt packets. A few of his work friends spied us (thanks, Susie!) and one was even working the water station at mile 18, which was awesome (thanks, Joseph!) We made our way into the Bronx for a mile, rocked out to some Eye of the Tiger and then headed back to Manhattan for the final 6 mile push.

This is where it started to get really tough (and frankly a bit blurry). I think no matter how hard you train, the last six miles are going to be hard. Your body just keeps making the same motion over and over again and your joints start to ache. As we made our way down 5th avenue we just kept saying to each other, “this is only as far as two loops in the park” and “one loop in the park to go!” When we finally made it into Central Park with about three miles left, three miles feels like eternity.

But then we spot this guy with his awesome sign (we saw him twice before in the race - first in Bay Ridge, then in Greenpoint. Alex posted about it on our blog and the guy responded! Check the comments), and you know you have to keep going. Also, there are so many spectators, there really isn’t a place to stop at this point.

Look how crowded it was at the last few hundred meters!

And finally, we finished!! In 4 hours and 33 minutes.

And then we had to walk. And walk. And walk. With these ridiculous mylar blankets on.

And finally, after about 30 minutes of walking, we gathered our belongings and were happy to take a photo courtesy of the UPS guy.

We collected our families on the West Side of the park and changed into some awesome toe socks and flip flops.

Here’s Sasha rocking our medals. This poor dog.

Thanks to everyone for all your incredible support over the last few months and for coming out on race day to cheer us on! It was a great day and I’m so happy we did it (and finished)! Now if you’ll excuse me, we need to go fill out our application for the Amazing Race.

Check out all the photos here.

Tags: alex, karen, nycmarathon, running

Posted in Sports