It’s The Final Blog Post (Do do doo doo, do do do do do……)

You’re welcome for the earworm.

I know it’s been a while.  It has taken me this long to be able to gather my thoughts and get this together.  On November 5, 2017, Billy and I completed the New York City Marathon.  We raised over $5,000 for a wonderful charity, the DeGregorio Family Foundation, helping to fund research for esophageal and stomach cancers.  I was so looking forward to running on this historic course, in my favorite city in the world, side by side with Billy for the first time.  But the best laid plans…………….

You’ll notice that I wrote above that we “completed” the marathon, not “ran” the marathon. That’s because we were both injured, barely trained and should probably not have even tried, so we pretty much walked after the first 10K. But I wasn’t sure how to drop out after we had raised money for this great charity.  And we had already decided that this would be our last full marathon and our one and only chance to run in the Big Apple.  So we got on that bridge in Staten Island and gave it our best shot.

Our wait was long. And wet. I think it’s pretty well documented at this point how I feel about running in the rain (HINT: I hate it). At around the 10K mark, my calves seized to the point that I actually went into a deli to buy a pickle, hoping it would relieve the pain.  It did not. So that’s when my physical and mental breakdown started. There were tears. And discussions about finishing, even before we hit the 10 mile mark. But we just decided to walk. And the first half was pretty fun.

It went downhill from there.  Due to the rain, I was experiencing the worst blisters I have ever had in my entire life. I will spare you the gory details, but did you know you could get a blister *under* a toenail?  Yeah, that was a new one to me, too. But this was brutal. I will say it is no fun to be on the course when they are breaking down. From the halfway point on, there were no water stops, no spectators, few mile markers and very little direction. Being in the Bronx in the dark at mile 20 wasn’t fun at all. It was horrible and scary. I didn’t know where I was supposed to go and there were not any volunteers around. By the time we got to Central Park, Billy was slowing down a lot. I was afraid that with the blisters if I stopped, I wouldn’t be able to finish. And that led to a new dilemma – how exactly does one drop out of a marathon when there are no volunteers, water stops or med tents?  I don’t know.  So we had to push on.

When we finally reached the finish line, after over 8 1/2 hours, the volunteers couldn’t have been better. We cried together, they hugged us and were just wonderful. NYC made me proud.

This is how I felt when I finished, although we all know that this was Shalane winning!

This finish is very bittersweet. I am glad that we completed it, but this is NOT how I wanted to end my marathon career. But I cannot remotely envision training for another full marathon.

So this is it. Will I continue to run?  Of course, I will always be a runner.  But I will never, ever, EVER run when I don’t want to. I will never run in the rain. I won’t run if it’s windy. If I don’t feel like running a race that I’ve already registered for? Oh well!  I will run and race for fun, friendship and fitness.

I am not going to lie, this marathon broke me.  It mentally decimated me.  It was just two days ago that I was able to put my running shoes on again, and I managed to get 1 1/2 miles on the dreadmill, with 2 quarter mile running intervals.  I am slowly thinking about running again, and taking baby steps to get there. And I will get there.  But I will always remember this because we did it for one reason, and one reason only.

His name is Patrick.