What an adventure that was! It made me relive my own trek through NYC, although some of our perspectives on what we both saw were slightly different. It's neat how people go through the same experiences but come out with different stories. I really enjoyed reading about your race. I think you did a great job with your first marathon and you should be proud of it. You've definitely earned the title of marathoner. Congratulations! 

Congratulations!

 

The ferries were definitely not as normal.  I have never even had to wait outside for a minute.  Not sure what was up with that, sheesh.

 

I think 5:15-5:30 was closer to the goal that you could've done due to the lower mileage (Hal Higdon is low mileage) and being your first marathon and I hit you hit the ballpark with your first and you Goal B was spot on.  Yes, you had issues you had not experienced before but that happens a lot.  It's what we do after it that will make the marathon a great experience or a not so great and, IMO, you did great conquering those obstacles.  Well done!

Thanks D - yeah I probably should have had a more conservative A goal, but to me an A goal is a true stretch goal that you should only reach if the stars align... so in that sense my A goal was appropriate.  I knew it would really be a stretch given the temps had reached 65+ and that I'd be out there for a long long time.

Dtothe2nd - yeah narrating from the bathtub was nice.  I was a bit incoherent when narrating - jumping around the course from various memories, so I had to edit it to be a bit more logical, but it was nice to have a lot of the text already down.

Onemile, PF, Jerry, HalfCrazy, LRB - thanks!

John - I was really upset that I'd missed you, but I didn't realize that I was even passing the mile 18 water station at the time, if that makes any sense, I was just thinking about making it to 116th to see my husband.

Allison - yeah, marathons are hard.  Had this been a training run I totally would have just stopped and been like "nope, not today"

Dave - yeah it was pretty much a suckfest as far as bodily pain went.  I might be one and done, I might not.  I am already qualified for next year, so it is to be determined.  My husband was really great yesterday :-)  I think without him being there so often I would have totally DNFed.

Tracilynn, D - yeah the cursing was actually worse before the first revision.  I think that the pain was still loud and proud while in the tub!

workinprogress - thanks! I knew my A goal was a stretch

Lily - I'm glad I could give you a much slower runner's perspective on the NYCM. =D

PleasantRidge - I try to be tough.. probably because I'm an older sibling so I couldn't be the wimp as a child - I've always had to be "brave" so my younger siblings would fall in line when we were kids.  As a results I basically never cry.  I was reading some people saying "oh I was crying at the start, I was crying when I saw X, I was crying when I finished" and I was sort of like "why?"

 

What I really meant is that I saw NY through the eyes of a tourist, while you saw it through the eyes of a resident. For example, I enjoyed running through South Williamsburg. I thought "Woah! I can't believe I'm here. This is like in the movies..." I didn't feel any creepiness anywhere. I also enjoyed the crowds spilling into the streets. I felt that if I were there inconveniencing the New Yorkers, they could bloody well spill in their own streets if they wanted to cheer for me and the other 40.000 runners. But for you, it was different: you were running in your own streets and the spectators were not respecting the tape and thus made running more difficult at that moment... That's what I meant by we had two different perspectives. 

 

One last thing: the way I see it, we are either all penguins here, in relation to the NYCM winners, or we can think of ourselves as being all runners, regardless of our ranking. I prefer to think of you and myself as runners, not as penguins. You're certainly no penguin to me. And especially not after what you just did on Sunday. 

The tourist vs resident viewpoint is probably true. My life in NYC is a lot of navigating huge crowds and never feeling like I have very much personal space - it gets old pretty quickly. I also think that you enjoyed the spectators more because even if they were spilling into the streets, you didn't have people walking during the race in front of you at mile 8, etc.  Between the spectators making the path more narrow and the large number of walkers parts of Brooklyn were extremely frustrating. There is a massive difference between a wave 1 start and and a wave 4 start. I think the forced weaving probably contributed a lot to my hip pain. That said, if I do another one of these foolish races I'll train a lot harder and build up my base some more.  I should probably also lose the last 20ish lbs of extra weight that I'm carrying around =P

Thanks for considering me a runner and not just a penguin.  The running scene in NYC is very competitive, so I always feel incredibly slow.  That said, I mostly try to compare myself to myself.

 

That's all any of us does, really. It's been that way since day one. Everything else is just fodder for the interwebz.

Yep, me, too.  I know I'll never be objectively fast.  But I'm getting faster and meeting MY goals.

 

You know you posted a pic, right?  And none of us can see the extra 20# of which you speak!

+100! What the heck is she talking about?

Yeah about the weight thing, I agree too. You look so fit and thin. If you have an extra 20 pounds you sure can't tell it!  Congrats again

Congratulations Jill, awesome report!