Five Years Ago Today...

Javits Center - NYC Marathon Expo

Friday, October 30, 2015 

Photo Credit: AK

On this very date five years ago, I ran the New York City Marathon for the very first time.  I have a great deal of empathy for those scheduled to run this year's race, whether professionals, qualifiers, lottery winners, or charity-team participants (I have used the final two classifications as my invitation to participation each of the three years I have run this great event), which had been scheduled for this morning. It will not take place. It is a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and this nation's (in my opinion) incredibly underwhelming and embarrassingly selfish handling of it.  It takes its place alongside more than two hundred thousand American lives, untold American businesses, and innumerable American events as 2020's COVID-19 casualties of these United States. 

But I digress. 

New York City Marathon Day is the first Sunday of November.  Five years ago, it was also the day on which Daylight Savings Time ended.  For one slightly less anxious about his first attempt at the Marathon than was I, an extra hour's sleep was a boon.  For me?  It was simply an extra hour spent staring up at the ceiling in our pitch-black room at the Wall Street Inn.  

Befitting my status as a newbie who was running solo, I was not only underdressed for the Staten Island Ferry ride from Whitehall Terminal to Staten Island (it was a refreshing cold, it was an invigorating cold, boy was it cold), I also arrived at Fort Wadsworth (the Marathon's starting point) far earlier than I should have.  I tend to pace around when I am bored and/or anxious.  Five years ago today, with more than two hours to fill between the time I reached Fort Wadsworth and the 11:00 am gun time for my Wave, I walked all over the property.  Multiple times.  I was cold. I was bored and, most of all, knowing how woefully I had undertrained for the Marathon, I was very anxious.  

As the other runners in my Wave gathered in and around the starting corrals, I was stunned by the "discard" clothing strewn in the trees. Not simply by the sheer amount of it, which was substantial, but by its quality.  People discarded clothing that was more expensive than anything I would buy myself.  A Parks Department employee who was standing near my corral told me, in response to my question about what becomes of the discarded clothing, employees gather it up, it is laundered, and then it is distributed to those in need, including the homeless.  

Dunkin' Donuts is a sponsor of the Marathon.  At Fort Wadsworth they had a stand at which they were giving away winter hats - in addition to hot coffee and food.  The hats went faster than the coffee or the bagels.  I had wanted to get one for Margaret, who would spend her Marathon Day rambling around New York City with Gidg, Jeff, and Lynne, but I missed them at the DD stand.  Luckily, the very well-dressed tree immediately to my right was wearing several of them.  I helped myself to one, folding it up and stuffing it into the front right pocket of my shorts. I gave it to her when I saw her post-race.  She was so moved by the gesture that when we arrived home, she laundered it...and promptly gave it to our dog, Rosalita.  Rosie was as moved as Margaret had been. I think it ended up being sold in one of my wife's garage sales. 

Rosie modeling the 2015 DD NYC Marathon Hat

Photo Credit: AK 

But I digress. 

My woeful lack of preparation turned the final half of the Marathon into a knife fight.  Fortunately for me, as I trudged up First Avenue towards the Bronx, somewhere at or around Mile Eighteen, I saw my wife and our friends.  Margaret and I have spent the last three decades together. While I am always happy to see her, I am quite confident that I have never been happier than I was right then, in the mid-afternoon of a November Sunday surrounded by thousands of strangers on a Manhattan street.  She was a B-12 shot.  I know not by whom this photograph was taken but it remains a favorite of mine half a decade further on up the road:

First Avenue - 2015 New York City Marathon

November 1, 2015

My goal was to complete the Marathon is five hours or less. As the late, great John Wooden pointed out, "Failure to plan is planning to fail." Fail, I did. I crossed the finish line in Central Park five hours, seventeen minutes and twenty-six seconds after I had begun my odyssey.  

It was an extraordinary day.  From beginning to end. 

-AK