Just the same, but not at all

4:28:08 again, but keep that groundhog on its leash.

Yes, my finish time was to-the-second-identical to my Ottawa Marathon time 18 months ago, which is admittedly freakish. But Sunday’s New York City Marathon was a whole different bowl of kettle chips.

For the non-pro, NYC isn’t a race. It’s a life experience. In Ottawa, I just finished. In the Big Apple, I crossed the line with an exhilarated smile; some new e-mail addresses – and a respectable limp.

First some honesty: going in, my stated pre-race goal to “have fun” was  losing its fight with my internal A-type who wanted to shave two minutes from my PB and sub-4 hours. And surely, I was fighting fit. My tempo runs and speed work had been faster than ever and my speedy friend Lisa was going to pace me (after I agreed to waive my right to a world record).

That said, running with 48,000 of your best friends is different in almost every aspect. I took an hour longer in the pre-race potty line than Geoffery Mutai took to finish the entire course — although I’d hazard a guess I felt better on ‘completion’ than he did. My 1,000-person race corral was a mass of jittery athletes stuffed full of Cliff bars, high on Gatorade and hope. How high you ask? When the starting call came, the crowd burst into song with a mystifying, but strangely inspiring, rendition of New York New York (those four words are all the lyrics I know, but it seemed enough).

Performance over, we shuffled across the starting line, hit ‘Start’ on our Garmins…

And came to a complete stop —48,000 runners take a looooong time to spread out.

Actually, 48,000 people take a long time to do anything, except swamp you. Lisa and I managed to navigate our way through just five kilometres before she was lost in a tangle of bodies like a tic-tac dropped on a shag-pile carpet. Fortunately, loneliness is not a problem in the NYC Marathon. Chatting to other runners, taking in the sights and feeling OK, I was swept along at a steady pace for 17kms or so.

The 18th kilometer seemed a step too far. Calf spasms, leg cramps and general malaise became my chief companion. After soldiering on for another 5kms, the cramps turned into a complete double leg seizure and my Sauconys ground to a halt for the second time that day.

48,000 runners means a lot of people passing you when you stand still.

Now, perhaps it was my fitness level, perhaps it was the crowds or maybe the sheer pageantry of the event, but at some point my brain changed gear. “Oh, crap, oh crap, oh crap” became “Screw-it, my goal was to have fun and that’s what’s going to happen.”

What followed was 19kms of posing for a picture with every race photographer, high-fiving as many people as possible; making some new friends; chanting  “Becky! Becky! Becky!” with four strangers on the sidelines; a pretty solid chat with a friend from undergrad days who was cheering on First Avenue (by the way she sells awesome bags at www.lunaboston.com) …interspersed with frequent looks in the direction of my legs, where I’m pretty sure I could actually see my agonized quads wrestling around like a cat in a pillow-case. Somehow, even a sharp announcement at 32kms from a bursting toe blister was no deterrent —and when the side cramps joined in at 38K, I actually laughed.

Honestly, this was no cakewalk. It was physically torturous. Possibly the most difficult marathon I’ve ever done. But with immense crowds to cheer me on, all I could focus on was “What a privilege. I can’t believe I get to be here.”

The finish line arrived almost half an hour slower than I had projected, but I was happy: Happy to have finished another marathon; happy to have done it in New York City; happy not to have barfed my way across the finish line (one of my friends did that for me — no joke) and happy my legs had not actually exploded.

Happy, just to be there.

When is 4:28:08 not 4:28:08?

When it’s in New York.

Postscript
I finished the race at about 3:45pm on Sunday afternoon. At 10:47pm that night I got an e-mail from a friend who had also run.

“ I just walked up to the finish line – there are about 100 disabled runners  (muscular/skeletal disabilities) who are still coming in. There are tons of Italians and Venezuelans at the finish line cheering for them.  The first of this group of runners, an Italian who walks lopsided, has to lean on someone for support  – he just crossed the finish line.

And we thought we had tough races.”

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