NYC Marathon Race Report

First of all thanks to all my supporters, including the Brickyarders; co-workers; Facebookers, and especially my sister Bonnie who despite having a sore throat met me at mile 7 in Brooklyn and again around mile 23 @ Columbus Circle heading into Central Park.

I saw some way crazy things out there: in Athlete's Village I met a girl from Litchfield who had her whole Twister game set up, people stripping down buck naked to apply Vaseline, a surgeon from Chile, a marathon almost every weekend guy from Frankfurt,  the Rainbow Hair runners, and a guy who ran the whole race in a cheap pair of flip flops.  Being in the Green Start Wave II had one advantage: we had a perfect view of the elite males warming up, got to see Meb, Haile, and the others live.  Our group started on the lower level of the bridge, and took an alternate route for the first 3 miles.

Tried to keep a pretty even pace the whole race, memorable sections included rejoining the Orange and Blue runners at mile 3, seeing the Chilean Miner somewhere around that time, mile 7 in Brooklyn ( see above), coming off the 59th street bridge into the massive crowds of Manhattan, the awesome spectators in Harlem, and of course that last stretch up 5th Avenue and down through Central Park. 

I spent a little time texting and calling my sister during the race, and stopped for sister hugs x 2...so I think I could have run a little faster, but that is the NYC Marathon experience!

I thought I might die after the race when I had to walk from 67th street to 77th Street to get out of the park and then turn around and walk back to 60th street to meet Bonnie, but I lived!

The picture is of me and Joan Benoit Samuelson, 1984 Women's Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist.  I was psyched to meet her as I had actually watched that race as a 14 year old kid, and right after that started running...

So who wants to run with me next year??? Registration for the 2011 race opened this morning!