2009 ING New York City Marathon Recap – Part 1

The 40th running of the ING New York City Marathon was my fourth New York City Marathon, and it was my best ever. To me, it was all about experience this year, and I set a goal before the race – to enjoy every single moment running through the Five Boroughs with a great friend. Despite my faster times in previous three tries, I suffered a lot of bad moments and heartaches during and after those races -- the moments I only experienced in the New York City Marathon.

In previous two years, Stacy came and supported me on First Avenue and at the finish line, and she was able to make my bad feelings go away quickly. This year, she was in the race running with me, and what a feeling it was when we crossed the finish line together after a 26.2-mile journey – more than 2 1/2 years in the making.

The marathon week went by fast this year. We ran the Nike+ Human Race and Poland Spring Marathon Kickoff back-to-back, plus a few extra miles at Riverside Park the week before the marathon. On Thursday and Friday, we spent a little time at the expo. Due to economy downturn the expo was getting smaller than ever, as a result we didn’t spend as much time at Jarvits Center as we used to.

It was a quiet day on Saturday and we missed the fireworks because of the rain. I still remember what a great pre-marathon day back in 2007 where we witnessed Ryan Hall's victory at the Olympic Trials in the park. We also went to a TFK pre-marathon party and met Bernard Lagat, which was quite entertaining. Hopefully a day like that can happen again in the future.

We got an extra hour of sleep because of the end of daylight saving, and as usual I got up at 2:45am thanks to my seven alarm clocks near my bed. It was Halloween Night and I bet most people were still out there trick or treating when I got up! We took the subway to Times Square and walked over to Bryant Park to catch the bus. By 5:15am, we hopped on the marathon “coach” [I refused to get on that NJ Transit bus] by the Library and since it was so early, we were able to get to Staten Island within a very short period of time. Though, we weren’t able to take a nap on the bus and we had to wait 4 hours at Fort Wadsworth. Thankfully the temperature was quite mild and more importantly, the rain stopped.

Since we were the first ones arrived at the Marathon Village, we didn’t encounter any bottlenecks at the main entrance like I did the past 3 years, and we were greeted by cheerful volunteers.

We then headed to our village (blue). For some reasons I had this crave for coffee so I headed to Dunkin' Donuts for a small Cup-O-Joe, while Stacy went to a tea tent and met a very nice lady from [where else] and had a brief conversation with her.

We then tried to find a place to settle down without Snuggies, and we found this bench by a building. It was a great spot because we didn’t need to sit on the wet grass/ground. Our plan was to sit there and had our 3 breakfast breaks until the baggage drop off. The hours went by pretty fast this year because I wasn’t alone, and we met a runner from Washington state area, and another lady from [where else.]

At some point we realized Dunkin' Donuts were giving out fleece hats and SC wanted a hot pink one because it was chilly out. Though, I had no idea where they gave them out, so I spent at least 10-15 minutes walking around to look for one, but no luck. I returned to our staging area and that gentleman from the great Northwest, now with a pink hat on, told me DD was giving out hats where I got my coffee earlier that morning… really?

Of course when I walked over there they weren't giving out hats, but there was a pack of people waiting for something (not coffee.) I waited there for an additional 10 minutes and I was about to give up, but a DD guy finally came out with a bag full of hats so I took a hot pink one for SC and an orange one for myself. It was very chaotic to be honest.

We had to drop our bags by 9:30am so we walked down to the UPS trucks around 9:10am. Logistically it was a nightmare because they parked the trucks on a muddy grass field and I had my flats on. It was annoying to walk on mud with race shoes on.

It was almost 9:35am and we had to stop by Brightroom to take a pre-race picture. Since the [where else] lady had the 24XXX number (so as SC and they were in the same corral) she tagged along with us. The only problem is, I got a higher number (25XXX instead of 24XXX) and by rule we were supposed to go to 25XXX if we wanted to start together. I didn’t realize that until SC and that lady went into their corral and I was stopped by the security guards, they wouldn’t let me get in. Bad.

I got very upset because I was scared to lose SC in this marathon (I shouldn’t be but oh well) so I ran down 30 feet to my corral and guess what, they just closed my corral. I had to beg (literally) the security guard to let me in and they finally let me, and I had to walk through the crowds back up to 24XXX to look for SC, thank god she was there.

We finalized our preparations but we realized that we were standing by a loud speaker, frankly it was not a good experience standing by it for 5 minutes before a race, I think I went deaf...

It wasn't too cold so I made a decision to ditch my throwaways (from Conway, ugh) as we slowly moved to the start near the toll booths. It was almost 10 and here came the singing of America Beautiful. I often got emotional, whether they sang the National Anthem and God Bless America before my previous races, and this time was no exception. From sea to shining sea… and this time I was starting with SC, what a moment it was.

It was 10 o’clock, and they just fired the starting cannon. Oh god.

[To be continued]