Notes
NYC Marathon. My 6th of 6 stars. What a roller coaster ride.
I woke up early this morning and I was ready to go for the day. I picked up my coffee and had my bagel with peanut butter with a plan for another bagel closer to the race start. The problem was that I had a very hard time getting this bagel down. I was extremely nervous for the day and it was unlike anything else I had experienced. Just eating this bagel was hard for me and I don't know why. I got it down, had my coffee and was ready to go. I got out to the start and I think I went to the bathroom about 12 times. I was so nervous for this race. I didn't even have the time goal as I did in other big races and yet this feeling of anxiety was overwhelming. I was unable to eat my other bagel and only had few bites. I think I paid for that later. My anxiety finally calmed down a little bit when we left the corral to get to the start line as we were only the bridge for about 8 minutes before starting.
Mile 1 was slow but it was straight uphill and I ran fairly easy. Mile 2 was straight downhill and I lost the signal on my GPS and I had no idea how fast I was running. It manually split it at the end of the mile only to realize I was fast but I really didn't put much effort into it so I was ok with that. The next couple miles were solid and I felt good. It was faster than I planned on running but I felt strong. I stopped for a quick bathroom stop on mile 7 but it was fast. I was feeling good but as I kept running, I slowly started to cough a little bit more each mile. The cough was suppressed by cough medicine for the first 3-4 miles but it slowly started to creep in more. My first tough mental moment was on mile 9 when we made a turn and climbed up a hill. I was not expecting this particular hill and it was a bit tough for me but I fought on. Mile 10 was interesting trying to avoid the Hasidic Jewish community that were crossing the street as if a race wasn't going on. I was warned about that and only had one near miss but I could see how it could have been a problem for some. I kept running well and crossed the halfway point around 1:32:30. This was a pretty good pace for me and I was happy here except as I kept running, I kept coughing more and more. I was really starting to get annoyed at this point.
The second half of the race started well. Miles 15 and 16 included the Queensboro bridge and slowed me a little but not as bad as I thought could happen. That was a tough bridge because most of the bridge was uphill with a shorter downhill. It was very exciting turning back on to 1st Ave as the crowd was amazing. I saw Kate and Megan after the 17 mile marker and that was a huge psychological boost for me. I don't think they saw me coughing but at this point, I wasn't running more than 0.1 miles without another cough. If I could have, I would have stopped for some cough medicine. It felt like a necessary thing at this point. Mile 18 was where the wheels started to come off. It wasn't my legs or my fitness. They felt fine. It was this cold that was destroying me. I kept coughing and coughing. At this point, I started to get dizzy and had tunnel vision. I had a hard time focusing on anything other than straight ahead of me. I got to the bridge into the Bronx and had to stop moving forward because I bent over coughing. It was painful. At this point, I just tried to keep moving forward with the hopes of a 3:18 but the coughing continued to get worse. The bridge back into Manhattan was tough because I had to stop again due to coughing and that happened again when I was on 5th Ave. At this point, I had no energy left. Some of this was not being able to eat like I wanted but some of it was the cold. It didn't help that it was up around 60 degrees which was warmer than I hoped but it only played a small role. It was tough coming into the park. The tunnel vision was better but there was still some dizziness and the cough was bad. I saw Kate on mile 25 and it was a huge boost. I pushed it and climbed a hill to finish that mile and nearly fell over coughing. I knew at this point my day was done. I pushed on and managed to finish but I felt so tired. I don't even remember any of the flags on the way to the finish line and was reminded they were there the next day when we went for our morning mile. It was done though.
The minute I crossed the finish line, I broke into tears. I was so happy that I finished all six and I was sad I didn't average under 3:00. It was a very expensive, long, time consuming journey and it was finally done. It was hard to reconcile that at first. I got my NYC medal and then started to cry more when I got my six star medal. That's when things really felt real. It felt good. I did it. I learned later that I averaged 3:00:33.5 for all six majors. That is pretty awesome. Few people can beat that. I also finished in the top 8% of people in the race and I ran it while I was sick. That's pretty awesome.
I don't know what is next. It will take some time to find something new. I'm slower than I was ten years ago but the marathon or longer is still attractive to me. It will be hard to match what I just did and I will have to overcome some personal feelings because of that. It won't be easy to do that but I'll try. If I can keep running in the low 3's, I'll be happy.