Picking up from NYC Marathon installment one’s cliffhanger conclusion at the Staten Island start line, seconds before the race began…

…Our wave was cued to start with a cannon. Close and loud enough that it prompted several yelps of surprise and smoke you could actually see and smell. We surged forward in one pulsating mass of nerves and excitement. My first NYC Marathon and second ever marathon was beginning.

Nearing the starting sensors and the Verrazano Bridge, the crowd thinned enough to accelerate into a trot. I was in Wave 1 and right next to the 3:20 pace group. In healthier days those would have been my people. Instead I was aiming for around a 9:30 mile average to encourage my ankle to hold out. I opted to go out in the first wave anyway, to buy myself time to actually finish in time for our 6pm Amtrak home. Wave 1 set off at 9:50, I had friends in later waves who didn’t start till after 11am.

I’d decided to be selfish, going out early in a pace group I couldn’t keep up with to buy myself as much time as possible to finish. I was worried that the people around me would hate me, or that I would feel so self-conscious I wouldn’t be able to keep myself slow and I’d end up sabotaging my own success by hitting 7:30s out the gate to save face.

It ended up not being a problem. Things were crowded enough on the Verrazano that everyone around me was pretty much consigned to my 9:30 goal pace for the first mile. And once we crossed over the Bridge into Brooklyn it wasn’t crowded enough that anyone would be mad at me for gumming up the works. So with the crowd’s help, I settled into something around a 9:30 min/mile, and I did my best to stay there.

Like I had for the Army Ten Miler, I’d turned coaching off my Nike + app so I wouldn’t hear my pace and try to compete with a healthy version of me. I would instead run off feel and perceived exertion – keeping the effort well under max.

We crossed off the bridge and into Brooklyn just before mile 2, and immediately the crowd support was incredible. People everywhere cheering – old, young, whole families, tons of dogs, everyone was out. (I’m unhealthily dog-crazy so four-legged friends on the sidelines are a mixed bag because they give me the happies, but I also want to stop and say hi to each one.)

The same adrenaline-fueled glee that had pumped me up on the start line kept me sailing thanks to the crowds. It made me want to go faster but I held my legs to that pace I’d started with, trying to keep a rough count of time between mile markers. It seemed to work, at the 5k mark I was at 28:16 so just slightly faster than the 9:30 goal but pretty on point.

Huge race plus: The course was very well marked: Each mile and each 5k mark were dressed in celebratory signage accompanied by a digital clock. I was pretty sure I’d crossed the start line at around the four minute mark, so I had a decent idea of where I was without my app or GPS telling me explicitly.

The mind games also kicked in early. The first couple miles I was focusing hard on my ankle and whether it was ok. Then I would try to shake such thoughts from my head afraid I’d psychosomatically will my bones to fail. Eventually my thoughts were entirely overcome by the positivity of the experience. There was too much else to look at and listen to and think about to dwell on what may or may not happen.

People lined all twelve miles through Brooklyn. I probably benefitted from being in Wave 1 – early on in the day with spectator energy cranked up to eleven. I had a repeat of the Army Ten in terms of pre-race over-hydration, and had to pee by mile two. I held out till I’d finished my first 10k, then ran through the crowd into a line of porta potties. Another race plus was the bounty of bathrooms along the way – of which I made enthusiastic and leisurely use several times along the way!

At mile eight the orange, green, and blue courses converged into one. I had not memorized the course well enough, and at this marker I assumed we were running into Queens. Borough three! I thought! This is going great!

Six miles later, the crowds momentarily thinned while we ran over what I realized was the Pulanksi Bridge…we were of course met with a “Welcome to Queens” sign on the other side. I was a borough short of where I’d thought I was.

That realization stung like lactic acid build-up for a moment, but was quickly swept aside with the never-ending crowds’ never-ending enthusiasm.

Going slow and not really “racing” meant my mind and eyes were free to wander and take in the support and energy. And the signs! So many signs! There were the usual pick-me-ups like Mario Bro’s ‘Slap here to power-up’ posters, and joking digs like ‘Worst Parade Ever’.

There were more personalized messages than I’ve ever seen. Even though they weren’t for me each one touched me as I thought about the awesome friends and families (and dogs!) out supporting the people they cared about – out rooting for them to succeed. That love is inspiring no matter who the intended recipient is, plus it reminded me of my own friends and incredible husband who had trained with me, donated to Gilda’s Club, and sent me words of encouragement every step of the way.

On a (sort of) lighter note, the best sign I saw (Walking Dead four-weeks-old spoiler alert here!) was a picture of Glenn next to the missive, “If you PR, Glenn gets to live.” While this was the funniest sign I saw, it was also stress-inducing, since I knew damn well I wasn’t about to PR! I just hoped that this beloved-character-life-or-death entreaty was meant for someone else.

My Queens letdown was short-lived and just a couple miles later I was headed uphill onto the Queensboro Bridge – the mile-and-a-half silent struggle I’d heard would give way to the ear-drum shattering crowds lining First Avenue in Manhattan.

In the fifteen miles it took to get there, I’d grown accustomed to rowdy crowds through Brooklyn and Queens.  Their energy begat more energy in the runners around me, and the dull roar had become a comforting backdrop drowning out everything but my playlist.

As we headed up the ramp into the Queensboro (or 59th St Bridge as I’m used to hearing it,) everything got quiet. Eerily so. The crowds shrunk away and it was just footfalls and heavy breathing.  I’d heard this was a tough moment for a lot of NYC Marathoners: crowd support falls away and the sun literally vanishes obscured by the overpass, just as the incline becomes much steeper, and right as you head toward the wall-inducing miles.

Indeed I saw a lot of people slow down to a walk, or even a halt here. Pairs and groups running together started yelling and begging each other on – in some cases pretty forcefully.

I was actually relieved for the silent, technically difficult moments on the way into Manhattan. Psychologically I knew those challenging bits would make the others sweeter by comparison, and I was happy to have a little quiet time with my thoughts, to really live in the experience and my gratitude at having it. Physically my ankle was holding up – I’d felt a few twinges around mile 13 and slowed myself down a little more and the brief pain had gone away – and my fitness was holding up – almost 16 miles into the race (already my longest run of 2015 by far!) and my energy was good and muscles felt fine.

Just before the middle of the bridge we crossed the 25K mark. My pace was still right where I (was pretty sure I) needed it hitting 2:24 at that point, or around 9:24 min/mile. Just past 25K the course started heading downhill into Manhattan.

Where everyone around me celebrated the descent I had mixed feelings about it.

I’ve written before that as a mini human I like going uphill on healthy legs. (Or wheels.) That day my feelings escalated past ‘like’ to need. It’s a lot easier on my hollow bird bones to run uphill safely. While other runners relished the gravity boost and sped up, each time the course veered downhill I felt more out-of-control, and more afraid my ankle wouldn’t survive the beating.

But I was so excited for the moment when we would turn onto First Avenue and the crowd support would reassert itself ten times stronger than it’d been before the bridge.

And that moment did not disappoint.

The crowd was so loud my headphones became obsolete. I pulled the left one out and soaked it all in as I (probably ugly) cried for at least the fourth time that day.

First Avenue carried us about three and a half miles north to the Bronx and the twenty mile mark. That’s about when the first waves of fatigue started to roll in, and the months of not running caught up to me.  (I was slowing way down so catching up to me wasn’t too hard.) I started walking slowly through each water mark, and made lingering use of another bank of porta potties. My ankle also started speaking up in protest against the day’s activities and I obliged dialing my pace way back. (Angry ankle or not, I don’t think I had a choice really.)

We spent only a mile in the Bronx before heading back into Manhattan down Fifth Avenue. Over the Madison Avenue Bridge my mental, emotional, and physical faculties were starting to self-destruct, but I realized we were really in the final stretch as I crossed into my twenty-second unrehearsed mile of the day.

I started doing feverish calculations in my head. At the half-marathon I’d been at 2:01, and had briefly entertained thoughts of picking up the pace a touch to go sub-4. Then my ankle moaned a little and I quickly pushed that recklessness aside. Now at 35k my time was (my original overall goal time of) 3:25 and I was starting to seriously consider walking. But I was so close and didn’t want to come in over five hours, so if I was going to let myself walk I decided I had to time it right – especially as I suspected a quick power walk would feel any better than running so it’d likely be a slow crawl.

I stopped a few times to stretch my hamstrings, which felt amerrrzing. I desperately wanted some pretzels and cursed myself for not packing salt tabs this time around. As I trudged on, a few times I saw folks on the sidelines giving out the salty crunchy snacks I was dreaming of, but always on the other side of the course and it didn’t seem worth the energy to backtrack or dodge and weave to get there. In stead I grabbed at any banana bits being handed out and forced myself to pick my feet up just a little while longer.

After crunching the numbers I made myself a deal  that I could  walk once I passed the 23 mile marker. At that point I’d only have a little over 5k left and I was pretty sure I could walk that much in an hour if I had to. As I reached that self-appointed mile marker of sort-of-rest, I stretched again and slowed to a brisk shuffle.

I walked about half that 24th mile, the whole time struggling hard against my own ego. There were a couple other walkers,  but I was still far enough towards the front of the pack (thanks to my Wave 1 start,) that almost everyone was not only still running – but still looking strong. It was a moment of humility that probably taught me more than any other part of the day.

The lesson being that noone was judging me for walking – noone except myself. I HAD to go easier on myself, to be nicer to myself. I criticize myself a lot, outloud and with expletives. Scott can vouch, I’m always verbally accosting myself. And for every time I voice my disappointment in my body and abilities and dedication and performance, I’m doing it ten more times in my head. I wouldn’t speak to another person the way I speak to myself. (And that’s not because I’m nice – I am admittedly not.)

And so I walked. And cried a little. I ate the handfuls of banana I’d amassed, and I thought about Mo which made me cry a little more. And I told myself good job. You’re doing a good job. You’re almost there.

After about ten minutes my legs had loosened enough that I felt like I could try a slow jog again. Maybe the bananas’ potassium booster had done the trick unlocking my  hamstrings, or maybe I just needed my own moral support to finish the race. Whatever the reason, I was pleasantly amazed to be able to run a little again after thinking I’d have to walk the entire final 5k.

By now we were in Central Park and really almost done. Around the mile 24 mark the path starts to wind mostly downhill. Where I’d dreaded those declines earlier I was so happy for the boost now. As we neared the finish line the crowd got more raucous. At one point I’m pretty sure I heard someone yell my name but I couldn’t tell who it was.

With around two miles to go Scott found and called out to me and seeing my love and biggest cheerleader kicked me into action. It was a second wind like I’ve never felt before. It felt like a store of energy was shaken loose somewhere near my heart and radiated on down to my legs. The emotional adrenaline burst sent me on my fastest tear of the day. My pace dropped to the low-8s and I barely felt the previous 40k.

As we closed in on the finish line and distances were ticked down in meters instead of miles, I felt that energy and adrenaline radiate upward behind my eyes. A serious ugly cry was building.

The last 200m the tears fell hard. (Maybe all the previous crying is what had depleted my salt-stores!) I couldn’t believe I’d done it, and that my much-maligned body and skeleton had pulled me through. My final net time was 4:12:49. Better than I could have asked or hoped for in my condition.

I cry/smiled through finisher photos, collected water and post-race fuel (and obviously my medal) and began the hike out of the Park.

Now for a big piece of advice to anyone doing this race in the future. Months ahead of time you have to choose between a post-race poncho, or bag-check. CHOOSE THE PONCHO. They are crazy nice with fleece lining and the poncho option cuts out your post-run walk by a lot. I went for the poncho, and not only am I snuggling in it right now, I don’t know if I could have walked any further than I did. With proper layering and throw away warm-up clothes in Staten Island, bag check shouldn’t be needed. Even opting for the poncho I walked at least a mile up and out of the Park and back down Central Park West for 12 blocks before I was able to meet up with Scott.

I was so happy to see my gorgeous man. I don’t know what I did to deserve such a cheerleader. The man had checked us out of our hotel, gone to Penn Station to check our luggage, coordinated through the race with my friends who were watching (none of whom I found in the crazy throngs despite their yelling!) and was there waiting with hugs, love, and clean clothes at the finish line.

We slowly shuffled west and plopped ourselves down at the first restaurant we found that could seat us. It happened to be an Italian cafe, so we ordered Peronis and a pizza, and my friend Nick came to join us for a few. (Exciting 2016 side note – Nick just got an awesome Cannondale road bike and is gearing up for his [of many] tri[s]! You know I love when my friends join me in my multi-sport addiction!)

A little before 5pm, Nick accompanied me to Duane Reed for some much-needed Advil, and then Scott and I made our way south to Penn. We snagged seats together on the train, and I attempted to settle in for a  nap, but the adrenaline was still flowing. I gave in and made a trip to the cafe car for snacks and a mini bottle (ok two) of delicious train wine. I wore my medal (and poncho!) proudly and gratefully the whole way home.

What a way to end yet another injury-plagued season. I don’t think I can keep calling 2015 a disappointment after a race like that. I got to be part of something so much bigger than myself – from fundraising for a great organization in the memory of an amazing friend, to being part of an international community of like-minded masochists seeking to challenge their bodies and minds. I learned to love myself more, and to say thank you to the body I’m usually cursing for its deficiencies.

And while it wasn’t the PR/BQ I wanted, I still did get to experience the hard work I’ve put in swimming, biking, and lifting. That fitness and this body got me over the finish line. I still hope that BQ is coming – and soon. And I hope I’ll get to run/cry through my hometown and the greatest city in the world many more times to come.

It’s been a week since the TCS New York City Marathon and I’m still walking on sunshine. Better than that, I’m still walking! (Pain-free!)

And I’m still processing how special that race was and how lucky I am to have run it. It wasn’t the race I planned on having when I signed up many months ago. It was untrained, and about 45 minutes slower than I’d hoped, but in a lot of ways it was also more and better than I originally hoped.

Instead of pushing my legs to move their fastest, I had to pull myself back and prioritize my health and future running career over instant gratification. Rather than bemoan my bones that keep letting me down and holding me back, I had to thank my body for the amazing thing it was doing and letting me do. I know how to push myself to the (literal) breaking point. I know how to run as fast as I can. I know that a healthy me has potential beyond the limitations my osteopenia has put on my race career; and I can and do curse my weaknesses and  mortality constantly. This race was a chance to put my health situation into perspective, and, rather than belittle my body, to celebrate and thank it. A marathon is serious physical business for a healthy, run-trained body. For one coming off (still on) an injury which has lost all run-conditioning it is a (probably cruel) shock to the system and a monumental ask.

In the weeks leading up to race day I hit a lot of emotional peaks and valleys thinking ahead to whether I’d be able to finish at all. I was terrified the ankle would scream from the first step and that I wouldn’t even make it over the Verrazano Bridge into Brooklyn. If my ankle held out I was afraid my muscles that have been through fewer than twenty running miles since August would cramp and seize from the shock of it all. I crested a few high points where I thought, nahh, my adrenaline and fitness and muscle memory will get me through it. At really delusional high moments (high in so many senses of the word) I thought I could even still manage a sub-4. Intellectually I knew that was idiotic, but I don’t really run with my brain.

Scott and I took Amtrak up to NYC the Friday before the race, which happened to be my birthday, which also happens to be the birthday of my friend Mo, in whose memory I was fundraising and running. It makes for a bittersweet day.

Scott of course showed me an amazing time, with dinner and Hamilton round two. (I am so disgustingly lucky to have seen this show not once, but twice. Seriously second-mortgage your house, sell your kids or organs, do whatever you need to. Just. Go. See. It. [After poop and my fear of my own bicycle, I’m trying to make a musical about the founding fathers the most talked-about item in my race blog!]) After the show we met up with some of my old theatre friends and stayed up till 1:30, which for us is CRAZY late. (But my actor friends are CRAZY fun too – and also just plain CRAZY!)

The next day was devoted mainly to expo and race-prepping. The expo was at the Javitz Center, which happens to be where I took the bar exam back in 2010. (Painting Saturday also bittersweet but in a different way.)

After I picked up my number and packet, Scott went and found a bench to hang out and read a book so that I could buy all the things. (How do people who are not married to Scott get through race weekends???) Getting to the expo on its final day meant a lot of the XS sizes had already been consumed, so I only ended up buying most of the things. That’s probably for the best. (I did buy three more pairs of socks. Stop buying socks, Liz!)

Once I’d just about melted through my plastic (and of course changed into an NYC Marathon branded outfit) Scott and I had a few hours to kill before we were meeting one of my incredibly speedy cousins for a pre-race buffet. Fortunately it was college football’o’clock and we weren’t far from the USC alumni bar, Pennsylvania 6.

We arrived a little before kickoff so we grabbed awesome seats, and I squirmed bit, embarrassed I’d opted for shameless marathon branding over USC.  (I wasn’t thinking when I packed!) I bought myself SoCal cred by proclaiming loudly to the bartender that I too was a Trojan, and screaming wildly for every moderately decent play. Proclaiming my ambivalence about my run time the next day, I also had a beer and a half, two enormous soft pretzels, and wings. I almost regretted my pre-dinner recklessness once we met up with cousin Carol at the buffet, but those pretzels were so good.

I’ve got several cousins who are all mini like me, who run three hour and sub-3 marathons. I think they are the coolest ever, and I loved seeing Carol before the race. She’s done NYC seven times and in my mind she’s a total race celebrity. After indulging as much as I could stand in the Marriott Marquis pre-marathon buffet Scott and I headed downtown to a hotel near the Staten Island Ferry launch, where I’d have to be at 6am the following morning.

By this point I was fully fueled physically, but I was starting to fall apart mentally…

…While the weeks preceding race day had seen altitudinal shifts – as many peaks as valleys – as the moment of run-reckoning crept closer, those peaks became entirely obscured. By the time I was fifteen hours out I was instead living solely between valleys and those kind moments when I forgot I was running the next day.

Every time I remembered I was running became a low point. I told Scott about my amnesia-dread mental ping-pong. He started asking me every so often how I was feeling, and each time I’d respond ‘trough’. By the end of the evening, after buying bagels, peanut butter, and bananas for the morning at a bodega near the hotel, I had begun to unprovoked blurt out, ‘Trough!’ every fifteen minutes or so – which was about how often thoughts of what I was sure was impending race catastrophe collided with my emotional fortitude.

I went through the pre-race motions of laying out clothes and race-fuel, breakfast and everything else I would need in a few hours. I have a button shaped like a heart and inscribed with a cursive M that Mo’s family had made for all her friends – Team Maureen – when she was diagnosed for the final time. That was carefully affixed to my tights. If anything could lift me out of the pre-race troughs it was to think about the bigger picture.

I finished my night-before ritualizing, including the crucial task of cutting the sleeves off my Gilda’s Club race tee. The team shirt was really nice: cute, well-made, and actually small enough for me. But I can’t run in short-sleeves. I have to have either long sleeves or a tank top. I find short sleeves really uncomfortable. They rub between my bicep and torso, (probably because my guns are so huge, right?) bunch up uncomfortably around my arm band, and, depending on the weather and level of exertion, leave me overheated. So, feeling a little guilty but needing to honor the part of myself that is a total meathead, I sliced and diced my team tee into a tank top.

It was about 11pm when I finally drifted to sleep – though thanks to a well-timed daylight savings, I told myself that it was really 10pm. In bed at 10 with a 5am wake-up meant I was getting 30-60 minutes more sleep than most nights, so given my race-pace ambivalence, I felt pretty good about my REM-cycle prognosis.

The early pre-ferry morning was uneventful. I was out the door and in an uber by 5:45. And then at the ferry by 5:47 because I had not realized just how close it was. (Cheapest uber ever but the driver was nice about it!)

I was signed up for the 5:45 ferry, because for some reason charity runners got the shaft and got to pref our race transportation after everyone else already had. I was in Wave 1 which didn’t start till 9:50am, and 5:45 was the latest ferry still available when it was my turn to sign up. However I learned from Carol and other NYC veterans that no one cares or checks. This was completely true, and I walked right onto the 6am with a couple hundred other runners no problem.

Usually I steer clear of coffee before a race, given my nervous tummy. But with almost four chilly and sure-to-be-boring hours to digest before the gun would go off I thought some warm caffeine on the boat might be in order. And I was shocked to discover it was really good! I was happy to have the yummy, heated wake-up.

The ferry was pretty funny, because its human composition was 99.999999% runners, and a few very confused-looking morning-after revellers wrapping up their Saturday nights. The race was Nov. 1, so these post-party stragglers were all in costume – most of them rocking gory zombie face paint and other festive accoutrements. They probably expected to slink quietly home, unnoticed, before the sun was fully up to sleep it off. Instead they were on a boat with hundreds of excited and decidedly sober marathoners. I felt a little bad for our confused undead shipmates, but I couldn’t help laughing at them too.

The ride to Staten Island was about twenty minutes. Once off the ferry, everyone is loaded onto buses for another thirty minute ride to the start line festival. We arrived there around 7am and immediately encountered airport-style security – with the obvious exception that we could keep our water bottles. (Actually the guy in front of me tried to leave his behind like at TSA, and the police called to him that he should take it because it’s important to hydrate before a marathon.)

As expected, I got to spend almost two hours bored out of my skull but too cold to sleep before it was even time to hit my corral. Happily it was not as cold and windy as last year apparently, and between my long tights, long sleeved running shrug, the disposable jacket I bought at the expo, (the best $10 I spent there) and the fleece beanies Dunkin’ Donuts was handing out (life-savers!) I wasn’t too uncomfortable. I did wish that I’d remembered the old junky sweats I was going to wear and pitch, but hearing war stories of the race-day wind in 2014, I could not complain.

A little before 9am I joined one of the many porta potty lines (this race was well-stocked with bathroom options). In line I met a woman who’d come up to do her first marathon from Uruguay which was very cool. While hanging out all morning I heard many languages spoken. With just under 50% of racers hailing from the US, I loved how international and inclusive the event felt.

International things I didn’t love as much: the testicles of the French men standing ten feet from me most of the morning, who pulled their very loose and leggy shorts all the way up to apply anti-chaffing cream. I’m not kidding, I saw multi-cultural scrotum on Staten Island at 8am. I generally love endurance athletes’ lack of body shame, but that was a oui (get it?) bit much for moi.

The NYC Marathon is the world’s largest, with over 50,000 runners. To handle the crowds, racers are split into slightly different courses for the first 8 miles – designated by color (green, orange, or blue.) I was in orange, and had been hanging out in the start line festival area designated for my fellow orange bibbers. It took about  10 minutes to walk from there to the actual corral to line up.

I got to the Wave 1 Corral D Orange corral (got all that?) around 9:15, whereupon I commenced more waiting! There were lots of antsy runners crammed into a smaller space, so at least I wasn’t as cold anymore. I ate my second banana and mini bagel with peanut butter (two of each plus coffee, and a bottle of Nuun were my pre-race breakfast) just in time for the slow march to the actual start line.

As we shuffled around trailers and grandstands, the Verrazano Bridge came into view, and I was lifted out of my trough by waves of excitement and gratitude.

I’d wondered for weeks if this were a good idea – if this would be worth it. Right then I knew it was – if only for that moment. I’ve never felt a crowd of thousands stir to life at the exact same emotional moment like that. The first of many tears that day began to spill. I wasn’t cold anymore, and I wasn’t worried. Whatever happened I was a part of something special and far Far FAR bigger than myself.