Mike's Marathon Blog

I have never allowed a guest appearance on my blog before, but this felt like the perfect time. I received an email the other day from my very good friend and marathon partner, Miriam. She sent a ‘marathon recap’ email to her family and copied me. Since she spent 13 consecutive hours with me on Sunday (and believe me………they were not pretty!), I believe she deserves at least a partial post in the marathon blog. Just for the last few miles alone, she deserves a post. Around mile 21, my IT Band was as tight as Rosie O’Donnell’s waistband and she definitely helped me through it.

So, without further ado, our New York City Marathon recap by Miriam Gorman (with a few additions/subtractions from her running partner. Sorry Miriam, but I am editor in chief of Mike’s Marathon Blog!):

– Woke up at 4:45 a.m. to catch the Children’s Hospital bus to the start. We got to Staten Island around 7 a.m. and headed to the Charity Village section where Children’s had a tent. I’m sure a tent doesn’t sound so thrilling to everyone, but it was a lifesaver from the wind. It did absolutely nothing for the cold since it was around 30 degrees!

– We ate our breakfast and tried to stay warm until we had to drop off our bags (with warm clothes, iPods, phones, etc). Unfortunately, we still had an hour and a half till our start. The race had 3 different waves and we were last. As the first 2 waves made their way to the corrals, runners discarded their clothes in different recycling bins around the start site. We grabbed them! Fun fact – 16,000 pounds of clothes are donated to charity from the race every year. I was wearing a pair of men’s XL sweatpants. They kept me somewhat warm until I had to ditch them at the start.

– It was finally time for us to line up in our corral. We walked for about a half a mile to the actual start. At 10:40 a.m., we crossed the starting line and began running. Ten seconds later, we came to a dead stop. It took a few minutes before we were actually jogging across the bridge. There were SO MANY RUNNERS!!

– At about mile 5, two other huge groups of runners funneled into one (the NY Marathon has a few different routes at the start. Mainly because runners are on the top and bottom of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge). We already thought the runners were hard to dodge, now there were 3-times as many!

– At mile 8, I saw a college friend and fellow runner (and also an angel!). At mile 10, we saw a friend of mine from college, Kelly, who was so excited to see us. Her cheering us on was awesome!

– Around 2 hours into the run, I had to pee. Actually, I had to pee for about an hour at that point. Miriam kept making me run past outhouses because the lines were too long. I agreed and didn’t want to stop until the both of us had to go. We finally came to a porta potty with only a few runners in line. We stood for a few minutes until Miriam noticed a church behind us. She jolted up the steps and I unwillingly followed. After a few minutes inside, this is the conversation that ensued:

Miriam – “Where the @%$# are the bathrooms in this place!?!?”

(still searching for the bathrooms while shouting $%&#, !*@$ and &%*$#)

Miriam – “Holy $#*!, there’s a service going on!”

Mike – “Let’s get the @%$# out of here! I hate you! Why are we even in here?!”

We stopped to pee at a McDonalds a few minutes later……….and apologized to God.

– At mile 13.1 (halfway point) my watch said we had run over 15 miles. We had been running for almost 2.5 hours. Mike and I were confused. We were running somewhat slower than what we had trained, but it was unavoidable due to the volume of runners. At that point, we gave up our goal of finishing in under 4:20. It seemed impossible (more to come on this topic in an upcoming blog, The New York Time. Clever huh?).

– At mile 15, Mark, Jacky, Mark’s parents, sister, her kids and cousin were holding homemade signs and cheering for us like we were in the lead or something. We were feeling great, stopped to say hello for a minute and kept going. I think Jacky and Mark were more relieved to see us than anything. We were 45 minutes off our pace at that point and they told us afterward that they were certain something happened to Mike’s back. When they finally saw us, and he was actually running with a smile, they were shocked!

– Miles 15.5 – 17 were over the Queensboro bridge. It was not so fun (to say the very least!). No fans could get onto the bridge, so it was eerily quiet. All you could hear were cars driving overhead and people heavily breathing. This is also the point where many runners started walking, which meant much more running for us. It seemed that 90% of the runners walked the bridges along the course (and there were a lot of them). It was like we hit a wall of people walking. Mike and I couldn’t even run together. We were dodging people and maneuvering a ton just to jog, let alone run.

– We ran past the Children’s Hospital cheering section at mile 17 and saw my friend from high school, Jane and her husband, a few miles later.

– Miles 17-19 were up 1st Ave in Manhattan. The crowds were great and were filled with even more fans than Queens and Brooklyn.

– Mile 19-22 through the Bronx were tough. I hit the wall. I was kinda bored actually. There were not as many fans and I was getting hungry. The bananas I’d eaten along the course were long burned off (I remember this being the hardest part of Boston. At some point, you just want to stop running. Not simply because your legs feel like throbbing Gummi Bears, but because you have been running for over 3 straight hours! I can barely watch TV for 5 minutes without getting bored and changing the channel. Do you know what goes through your mind after a few hours of running? Craziness!!!).

– We entered Central Park around mile 22. It was amazing! The fans, the Park, everything.  We knew we were going to see Mark, Jacky and the Gorman crew soon, so that definitely motivated us to keep going. We finally saw them at mile 25. There was no stopping for chit-chat this time. We were in no mood (or shape for that matter) for chit-chat!

– We crossed the finish line in 5:13 minutes. Not what we had imagined, but we finished!! And the first thing we wanted to do after running 30+ miles? We were herded along for about a mile before being able to pick up our bags and exit out of Central Park. It was probably the worst part of the day, more than the 3-hour wait in the cold that morning. The security wouldn’t even let anyone stop to stretch and kept making us move. There were lots of people cramped up, we were freezing, could barely walk and were very ready to get out!

– When we finally reached Jacky and Mark, they had ice cream sandwiches waiting for us!!!! Just what we had asked for!!

Even with the cold, the 46,000+ other runners and the not so great time, it was an INCREDIBLY, AMAZING experience.  I had written “MIMI” across my race jersey and Mike had “MIKE” on his. We heard fans cheering “go Mimi, go Mike!!” literally every 2 feet (we also had the names of all the kids we were running for written on the backs of our singlets).

Running through the 5 boroughs and seeing their idiosyncrasies was very cool. The bands along the way (even the bad karaoke girl) were fun. Not once did I feel like quitting, even when I hit the wall. We pushed through it. Central Park gave us a 2nd (or 3rd or 4th or 19th) wind. I wore my medal the whole next day and so many people congratulated me. I loved it 🙂 I’m still tired 4 days later, but I’m already thinking about Chicago in 2011!!!

Thank you all for your words of encouragement and support!