A few times over the past year or so, I thought for a moment I might not be capable of running the New York City Marathon this year. Illness, injury, not enough training…any one of these things could have kept me out of the running. But in the end, despite not having run more than 16 miles since my last marathon two years ago, I lined up at the start on Staten Island, and 4 hours and 18 minutes later, I crossed the finish line in Central Park.

We headed to New York on Friday afternoon, and I remembered just how easy it can be to get into the City, taking the Merritt to the Hutch to the Cross-County to the Henry Hudson. It wasn’t more than 90 minutes, but once we got into Manhattan, things slowed down considerably, with a six-car accident closing the Lincoln Tunnel. We decided to park and walk to the Javits Center instead, and I exchanged a smile with John Oliver of the Daily Show as I got out of the car. Turns out we’d parked right in front of the studio.

I picked up my packet and got a souvenir hat, and we headed back uptown to eat. It was Grace and Lucy’s first time in New York, and Grace seemed really excited by the tall buildings and the general busy-ness. Sadly, we did not see Curious George anywhere, as she had hoped and was perhaps led to believe. We had Saturday to walk around (but not too much!) and visit with family. We celebrated Lucy’s birthday, and Grace and I went to the Museum of Natural History, where we marveled at the blue whale and communed with Teddy Roosevelt.

I got up around 5 the next morning and rode the subway downtown to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, where I caught a 6:00 ferry, in the dark and chilly morning, past the Statue of Liberty and over to the island, the one borough I’d never visited before. Even when the sun came up, it was a cold and windy day, and I spent the next hour and a half or so huddled between two UPS trucks parked in the runners’ village, taking on baggage to be picked up after the race. I ate a little, got everything ready for the race, and headed to my start zone about a half hour before the start, scheduled for 10:05 am. The entire village was very well run, and I had no trouble getting my stuff to UPS drop off to be shipped home or finding my way to my start zone.

My start happened right on schedule, and we started off on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge towards Brooklyn. The beginning of of the race was, as always, filled with excitement, high energy, and high hopes. I had a heady first half in which I stuck with the four hour pace leader (thanks, Dave!) and was carried along by hundreds of thousands of screaming Brooklynites. I even thought for a minute (or an hour) that I might make something happen and stay on pace, but in the end, I just ran slower and felt more sore as the race went on. Nothing went wrong; I stuck to my plan for hydration and food, but I just didn’t run fast enough to hit the four-hour mark, getting gradually slower as the second half unfolded. There were so many spectators cheering us on that I never felt like I hit a wall, and I did the best I could with the training I had. It was a disappointing finish in terms of the number on the clock, but it was actually, somehow, a really fun race. I felt good the whole time (well, until my whole body just started hurting around mile 18) and never thought I wouldn’t finish. I never had to walk and never actually cursed the entire idea of the marathon, as I usually do around mile 20 or so. I was disappointed not to have improved my time, but I was happy just to have finished.