New York Marathon - 07 Nov 2004

[Seafront Plodder]

“A record 36534 finishers, and every one a winner!” So said the headline in the New York Post that I read as I sat at breakfast on the Monday morning after The day before.

Stiff of leg and slightly heavy of head I had had time to reflect on my ‘never again’ throwaway comment made to my wife at mile 17. Never have I been so close to wanting to quit. Never have I had to dig so deep, arguing against my legs that told me I was in too much pain. Someone had my calf’s in a vice for the final 10 miles, and it hurt. But……....never had I raised £93 a mile for MS Society, and that thought, (coming to me as it did when the physical pain stopped me from running)……………….kept me going.

The New York City Marathon. A beast of a race! I was looking forward to it as a child does to Christmas, snaking through all 5 Boroughs - hey, when will I ever get another chance to do this?

No less than three alarm clocks were set for 05:20 on Sunday morning, and although I slept well, I was awake at the first sound of the first alarm. The evening before I had had the foresight to battle around the local deli (along with every other entrant it seemed) to pick up the ubiquitous bagel and a banana, I was showered, packed and ready to slip out of the door by 05.55.

Although the enormous hotel had somewhere in the region of 14 lifts, it was almost 15 minutes before I was on the ground floor along with many others anxiously looking for the Sportstours rep to take us to the coaches as we had not individually purchased tickets. I lost sight of him in the throng, but the closer we got to the pick up point the less the lack of a ticket seemed to matter as we were carried along with the ever-growing sea of runners and the ever-present pong of Ralgex. The snaking queues wove back and forth around Bryant Park but movement was swift. Coaches waited and we were on board, seated and away in around 20 minutes.

And so it was that I sat chatting to a Dutch guy in his first marathon about GPS watches. He had a smaller, more watch-like one on and seemed fascinated with what my Garmin 201 could do. Realising that I had to leave it on for around half an hour before it was needed in order for it to find a satellite or two, I turned it on with the intention of showing him the finer points of the personal training assistant. Disaster! What flashed up was the “Battery Low” warning sign. I knew that I had fully recharged it prior to leaving home but it clearly wasn't listening and promptly died on me. Oh well, back in the bag it went and we passed the time eating bits of banana and bagel washed down with Gatorade. It dawned on me that I indeed had recharged it, but had also packed it without turning it off! With my carefully prepared pace strategy now in tatters, I had nothing but the uphill start to save me from setting off too quickly.

We arrived over the huge starting area and I spent a while just wandering around casually watching others with half an ear on a religious service that was underway in a marquis. “God watches, while we run, in His name, praise be”. It was a bizarre sight, a service cum warm-up with around 300 people prancing and singing along whilst the chap at the front on the mike led them through the actions like some holy version of The Birdie Song.


It passed the time until I decided to join a queue for a cubicle (of which there were plenty), followed by a sit down in the autumn sunshine. Much has been said about the hours of waiting at the start but I found the time went fairly quickly. The sights and sounds and smells are everywhere and there really isn’t time to get too bored. Fellow runners are in the main happy to chat; we all have a common purpose and it wasn’t too long before I could put it off no longer. Finding baggage truck #3 (of 38 on my start alone!!) I handed in my bag and made my way to the start.

Unlike London, and despite what we were warned it didn’t seem to matter where we went in the queue. The three starts are all close together and it’s runners only from the time we started queuing for the coaches. I noted plenty of runners with the ‘wrong’ number in my orange start but no one seemed to mind.

As I was unexpectedly watchless I kept sneaking glances at others, and it was while a very chatty lady from California was telling me about her training schedule, and that there were three minutes to go – but she may be wrong – that we heard the boom of the starting cannon A huge cheer followed……and we all went nowhere. It was a good few minutes before we started to shuffle forward at all, and we snaked around the starting area dodging discarded clothes before crossing the bleeping chip mat at the start where the clock told me that we had taken 23 minutes to get that far!

Away we went and immediately we started to climb the hill to the Verazzano Bridge. I could see the Empire State Building and the rest of Manhattan in the far distance to my left, tugs below sprayed out great jets of red, white and blue water, and music blasted from speakers mounted high on the bridge. It was sunny, warm and I felt on top of the world.

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