25 Years a Marathoner
And no finish line yet in sight
Next month will be the 25th anniversary of my first marathon, Rock & Roll San Diego. As someone who hates to run in the heat, you would think San Diego in June would be a deterrent, however, my New York Team-in-Training group assured me it would be fine.
Nah, it’s a 7 AM start…cloud cover…it’s all good!
Gullible me. But I always wanted to run a marathon and decided I would start after having kids, and so when my third was an infant, I began training.
I trained mainly on my own out of convenience given my limited time, but I did miss helpful information and guidance. As in, just because you don’t like the taste of Gatorade doesn’t mean you can do without the electrolytes.
Lesson learned too late. I was randomly assigned number seventeen thousand something, basically making me one of the last people to start, found myself behind groups of four and five chatting and planning to walk the entire distance. So, I spent the first miles jumping up and down curbs to get around them and then was hit by direct and unrelenting sun mile after mile after mile on California highways.
I staggered across the finish at 4:06, thoroughly dehydrated, not only because I avoided Gatorade but because, as a nursing mom, I actively removed fluids from my body before running. And after. So yes, I felt like death. I probably should have gone to the medical tent like some of the other Team-in-Training people did.
Based on that experience, I feel very confident I would not have run another marathon, but no, I was already committed to another before I ever left for San Diego.
You see, once upon a time, there were no wonderfully convenient online lottery systems, oh no. If you wanted to run the New York City Marathon, you lined up bright and early on a given day in Central Park. You took a pen with you, and when the time officially began, the line moved to folding tables with volunteers who handed out paper forms. Yes, paper.
You submitted this with your information and contact number and waited some time to hear back. And I, along with a couple other Team in Training people, got picked.
So, what to do when Team in Training is excited that you are running another marathon for them? Bail, because your first one conjured associations of being dropped in the middle of the Sahara Desert? No.
Five months later, there I stood on the Verrazano Bridge in a one-wave start at 10:50 AM. Cold and brisk and windy was the day, my hat flying off my head as I raced down First Avenue and sailed happily into Central Park, crossing at a more respectable 3:42 time, having overcome my aversion to Gatorade.
That sealed the deal. I had to have more. And so marathoning became the metric of my life, training and racing accompanying every stage and milestone.
Dublin 2001 with Team in Training became Dublin 2002. Because, of course, the best laid plans mean nothing when world events turn everything upside down.
I was in the heart of my 20 milers when I took my youngest to a preschool orientation on that fateful sunny Tuesday in September. As cell phones were not the appendage they now are, parents and toddlers sat in complete ignorance of the horror reigning down on New York City, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
Blissfully unaware as I strolled to meet my friend after the orientation, she found me along my route, tearfully telling me what happened. I was trying to process that the Twin Towers were gone, and all I could utter was that my husband had had a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World at 8:30 AM.
Her eyes told me everything.
The beauty of the jogging stroller is that its design seamlessly allows for speed and bounce with its three wheels and shock absorbers. Over every bump and curb, my daughter was lulled into restful sleep, while my laser-focused runner’s mind simply said go faster, no thought intruding other than, if there’s no message at home, I’m going to kill him.
My older two liked to tease my youngest that I simply let the jogging stroller crash into the back wall of the garage when I ran into the house, but that is not true. I left her, peacefully, sleeping there via the brake, entered into the house, and heard the familiar beep of the answering machine.
No, my husband was in midtown that day, his company at the time electing to meet there rather than the quarterly breakfast meetings at Windows on the World, but in the general morning chaos of any family, details get lost.
After his journey driving four shocked Armani employees covered in dust over the bridge and dropping them safely in Queens, he made his way home and said, How can you fly to Dublin next month?
That hadn’t even been a thought, transfixed as I was with the rest of the world, with the sense of unreality that had descended after the unimaginable horrors unleashed on that fateful day.
In the weeks to come, Team in Training had made that decision for us, pivoting to the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C. That is how I found myself on their starting line, the utter chaos of the first major marathon in a new world of terrorism and uncertainty, that we could be touched anywhere.
Helicopters flew above, armed military were everywhere, volunteers scrambled to provide clear loot bags with endless lines, leaving us to simply abandon our belongings in nearby bushes.
And then the course, Marines running in camouflage, boots on their feet, carrying actual flags for 26.2 miles, the Pentagon a shell in the background, its devastated form a testament to the lives lost in the air and the building.
A Marine fell to his knees near the end, and his fellow soldiers yelled and ordered him to get up, and you could see every ounce of strength it took in those last tenths of a mile to stand and carry that flag across the finish.
It was powerful to witness, and I don’t think I will ever again see such united American patriotism, sadly.
And so year after year, I ran. Boston that following spring, Dublin 2002. I sought fun ones, Disney, Chicago, Nashville, Philadelphia, winding through Rocky’s neighborhood, Gonna Fly Now blasted through speakers. Three more New York City marathons as I qualified and didn’t have to enter the lottery, and then a whole bunch much closer to home, Brooklyn, Central Park, Syracuse, and at least ten Long Island Marathons.
Then I entered an unintended hiatus. It was just after I ran Syracuse in the fall of 2016 that a particular election night devastated me in ways I had not anticipated.
I had never fully contemplated before how much my own joy and optimism was intricately tied into a sense of global progress and hope, that despite inherent injustices and deeply embedded social issues and divides, there truly was never a better time to be alive, worldwide childhood poverty was being chiseled away, human rights abuses actively challenged and addressed, and greater openness and acceptance to voices historically silenced.
That someone so obviously cruel and divisive and self-serving could be elected changed everything I previously held about our values.
I never stopped running. In fact, it was precisely what kept me sane. And in the next couple of years, as the lure of the starting line called, I pivoted to half marathons, which were so much fun and required less rigorous training and downtime recovering.
But there is something unique to the marathon that wouldn’t leave me, and even in those hiatus years, I craved the distance, the dedicated effort, and it was the coveted Six Star Medal that reignited the joy, bringing me to Berlin in 2024, my daughter running her first marathon by my side.
We ran Berlin for fun, for the experience, and yet it didn’t satisfy the need to push myself, to test my limits, and that is how I trained for London 2025. I wanted to run it, run it for time, and so I trained all winter, ran the Brooklyn Half in 1:49, and felt ready.
Yet standing there at the start in Greenwich Park, not a cloud in sight and sweat already materializing, I began to adjust my expectations, especially as my music failed to load, which helps me to pace myself.
Ruh roh. And I say ruh roh, because as I ran in such heat, witnessing people fall, people carried off on stretchers, my goal became remaining conscious, leading me to abandon the 3:55 pace group before mile 20, walking through water stations simply to get every drop of water in the bottles, asking the kind volunteers to open said water bottles as even that became too tough, resisting the urge to ask for more water as the 30,000 runners coming up behind me would be equally, if not more so, desperate.
To add insult to injury, four guys carrying the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine passed me, Ruh Roh printed on the back. I grew up with Scooby, my kids grew up with Scooby, and now Scooby was mocking me.
I briefly imagined wheels on the bottom of my sneakers and wondered how long before they would notice me hanging on the back, but no! Let the four guys carrying the Mystery Machine pass me, bastards, I would cross that line under my own power, Scooby be damned.
Alternating a walk-run, something I despise, allowed me the energy for the end. And at mile 26, sidestepping a poor guy who had just collapsed, I finally saw my family amidst the roaring crowds cheering for me, Buckingham Palace in view around the bend, and I ran for that finish.
Was I disappointed it was 4:29:01? That four guys wearing a van passed me? Yeah……no. Not only had I remained conscious and crossed the finish under my own power, but I got to run London! The crowds were amazing, calling out my name again and again and cheering me on, and it was a beautiful day for anyone not running and standing in the shade with a cool beverage.
No, no regrets, this was a gift, and unlike San Diego, I came out of this looking towards a cold-weather marathon, looking towards getting into Tokyo, looking for yet another finish line to cross.
Each marathon is unique, each is its own journey, often depending on conditions beyond one’s control, and sometimes that means a world that seems ablaze literally and figuratively.
I won’t be derailed again. Twenty-five years a marathoner, you can’t take it out of me.
Joy in motion.
