On Friday November 3rd I took the 10:30 p.m. Chinatown bus from D.C. up to Penn Station in New York City. From there I hopped a ride over to 
Chelsea to meet up with my friend Dee at a house party and then we headed down to Tribeca to sleep for the night. On Saturday morning I made my way over to the marathon expo at the Javits Center on the west side to pick up my race packet, buy a bus ticket down to Staten Island for the morning, and found a cool pair of running shorts. After the expo I met up with my mommy in Midtown who had come into town for the weekend to watch the race and hang out with friends. We wound up spending the day walking around the neighborhoods of Manhattan, shopping, and got some pasta for dinner in the West Village. I went and dropped off everything I didn't need in the morning at my mom's hotel room and then made my way over to my hotel on the Upper West Side where I actually managed to fall asleep by 11 p.m.The alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. on Sunday morning and I was out the door of the hotel by 6:00. I took the metro down to the NYC Public Library at 42nd St where I was to catch a bus down to the start line on Staten Island. There were literally thousands of people waiting in line for the bus. It was quite a chilly morning with a high on race day of 45 degrees, and I was glad to be wearing gloves and a hat while waiting in line to get on the bus. There were so many international runners waiting in line around me. It was about 7:30 by the time we got on the bus and started rolling - first over to Brooklyn and then across the Verazano-Narrows bridge to get down to Staten Island. We were crossing the bridge a little after 8 and got to see all the runners with disabilities starting their 26.2 mile adventure heading the other way on the bridge after their 8:00 start. It was truly inspiring to see people on crutches,
people with no legs, people with no vision, all filled with the desire to traverse the same 26.2 miles I would be running in a couple hours. The bus let us off around 8:30, quite a while until the 10:10 a.m. race start. There was an amazing amount of nervous energy among the 38,368 runners gathered on Staten Island that morning - the largest group to ever start a marathon in history. It was an amusing sight to see everyone's pre-race routine be it sleeping, huddled up in a foil blanket, stretching, rubbing Ben-Gay all over oneself, etc. It took quite a while 
to stand in line to use the bathroom one last time and to check my bag. Race time came upon us very quickly.I was in the orange corral at the start meaning I got to cross the Verazano-Narrows Bridge on the top left side - thankfully not on the bottom where you can get peed on by runners on the top if the wind is blowing right. At about 9:50 they started herding us to the start line. After the singing of the national anthem, the gun went off at 10:10 a.m. and the race was underway. On the top right side of the bridge I got to see the professional runners go by along with Lance Armstrong and his entourage. There was a concrete wall with several armed NYPD officers dividing my corral from Lance's so I was not able to chase him down and pull down his pants as was my plan. I made it to the start very quickly after the gun went off and was on my way across the Verazano-Narrows Bridge from Staten Island into Brooklyn. See the picture of the thousands of us crossing the bridge above.
I felt good from the get go and started at a nice pace after I got past the crowded first mile. The crowds were 5-10 people deep as we treked through Brooklyn. Knowing how much training I had put in really helped drive me during most of the race. I had some moderate knee pain starting about mile 9 that I was able to run through and subsided around mile 13 or 14. I was running with the 3 hr 15 min pace group and crossed the half marathon mark at 1:39:12. At mile 15 I reached Queensboro Bridge, a nightmarish 1.2 mile uphill climb from Queens onto Manhattan. I somehow found the stamina to run up that freaky hill at which point I thought I was done only to be greeted by the thousands of New Yorkers cheering us on as we made our way onto Manhattan for the first time in the
race. The cheering crowds propeled me for the next couple miles at which point I fell apart or hit the proverbial "wall". The legs started cramping and I just didn't have the energy to keep it going at the pace I was at come mile 19 or so. See my demise on the pace chart above. It was a real struggle that last 7 or 8 miles filled with 
much stretching, walking, and agony. After we made it into Central Park around mile 24 I was able to pick it up a little bit and bring it home running in front of the enormous crowds. My mommy was there cheering for me at Columbus Circle at mile 26.1 and got to see me cross the finish line at 3 hours 45 minutes 22 seconds. My 8:36 mile pace for the 26.2 miles was good for 7,452 place out of 37,480 finishers on the day. There was an unforgettable feeling of accomplishment that came across me as I took that last few steps. Lance crossed the finish line in 2:59:36 (45 min 46 sec ahead of me) and called the marathon "the hardest physical thing I have ever done". The pain kicked in right away after my legs stopped and I was pretty crippled for that couple mile walk where you take the chip off your shoe, get your foil blanket, water hand out, baggage pick up, and then finally family reunion where I met up with the mother. We took a cab over to her hotel room where I got cleaned up and then headed over to Chinatown and caught a bus back to D.C. I can't wait for the next one!
