ING New York City Marathon - RunMarathon

My 16th Marathon
For a race as historic as the 40th running of the New York Marathon, you'd like to write some epic tale of overcoming incredible odds,or digging deep to find some spiritual answers to the cosmos. That didn't happen here on this day. What happened is a tale of a guy who was just burned out before he even got to the starting line. It was my 4th marathon of the year, and the 2nd in two weeks. My head wasn't in this one. What happened was I had just gotten over two weeks of a lung infection and my body wasn't in the peak condition that a great marathon calls for. I also discovered that if you race too often, you find yourself either tapering all of the time, or recovering the other part of the time, and "great training" doesn't have a chance to occur. I've been racing for the last 6 weeks, so that's about 7 weeks of unusual marathon training.
The first 10 miles were physically awesome. I was hold a good 7 minute mile average and was right on track to hit my low 3 hour mark. However, at myle 9, my "umph" left me completely. I just didn't want to race anymore. It was just simply "burn out". However, my body still had the ability, so I went on. However, by mile 12, my body began to join my mind and begin to throw in the towel. The miles began to slow down, one by one. By mile 15, I started getting cramps in my inner thighs and my calves and as time went on, everything that COULD hurt, did hurt. My PR slipped away, then my NEW YORK PR slipped away. However, I didn't want to have some mental melt down, so I decided that, as much as possible, I was going to enjoy the day. I was going to look at the city, look at the people, look at the race, and enjoy the fact that I was alive and doing better than most, so I pulled out my cell phone and called Mary to tell her to not be at the finish area to early and my race had gone in the pooper. On I shuffled, then walked and ran and shuffled some more. I talked to people on the side of the road when I stopped and stretched, which was often. I took orange slices everytime someone offered them and made sure to "thank" everyone. I slapped little kids hands. The crowds were awesome, as always, but when it came to mile 24 I made some decisions. I won't do more than 1 marathon in a year anymore. I won't do New York again unless it's for a special reason...like Mary doing it with me, or it's the 50th running, but not "just becaues".
There was nothing GREAT, or SPECIAL, or INSPIRING about the end of this for me. I "ran" most of the last mile, if you call what I was doing "running". My right knee was closing down and it was just some pathetic fast shuffle really. I crossed the line and was happy for it to be over, to close the last page of this novel. I walked forever to meet Mary and the kids at the corner of 88th. We walked for a few blocks until we came to a Starbucks, where Mary went inside and got us some delicious mochas, which I had been fantasizing about for the last 2 hours. We walked to the car and left New York City.

What WOULDN'T I?

Walked to the car.


Just to many things to list.


Just because MY race sucked doesn't mean it's still not a great race.