When I stepped outside for the first time the morning of the race I breathed a huge sigh of relief - the weather conditions were absolutely perfect! Earlier in the week I was seriously worried about the heat, but as the week progressed the forecast got cooler, and I became happier! Overcast and 57 in the morning, with a high of 65 later in the day. PERFECT race weather!!
Ryan dropped me off at the starting line staging area just in the nick of time, for as I was jogging to the starting line the gun went off! Oops-talk about cutting in close! (This brought back memories from the NYC marathon 3 years ago where we were stopped in traffic on Staten Island on the way to the race start and I had to jump out of the car, hop over a guard rail and run atleast a mile to the race start with minutes to spare!) So much for stretching!!
The race starts off in Central Park, Schenectady, winding through cute tree-lined city streets before heading down to the bike path along the Mohawk River at about the mile mark 4. Once on the bike path it's pretty flat for the next 13 miles, and only occasional opportunities for fans to cheer us on. The scenery was beautiful with the fall leaves just starting to turn, and had I not been running a marathon I might have actually been enjoying myself!!
It's time to give props to my tireless, committed fans along the way consisting of Ryan, Nikki, and Dan! They stopped at pretty much every location possible along the 26.2 mile course, cheering from bridges, giving me much needed power jel and gatorade, always making me and my running pals around me smile at their enthusiasm. It meant even more considering Ryan was on crutches (at one point forgetting and attempting to run after me to give me my hydration pack-ouch!! Dan later re-enacted the hilarious sight for me), and Dan and Nikki had to have been exhausted, staying at the wedding the night before much later than Ryan and I and still waking up early to follow me around for nearly 5 hours! Thanks to them everyone around me knew my name, and at one point a fellow runner refered to them as my "stalkers" -the good kind of course!! Hahaha! At one bridge Ryan yelled down to me to ask if I needed anything, to which I replied grumpily (this was around mile 17), "Yeah, to be done!!!!"
I made several friends along the way, as many of you know me keeping my mouth shut for 5 hours is near impossible! But I believe I met my match in Mr. Hughes (to my right, above), almost 70, he's run over 65 marathons in the last 5 years. He had some great stories and enjoyed sharing them with me along the way. After learning that I was from GA, he refered to me as "Georgia" the whole rest of the way. He would walk for a while, then catch back up with me a few minutes later and tell another story or two-this was a great way to pass the time. I came to find out at work on Monday that Mr. Hughes taught Physics at a local high school- and my boss was one of his students! From a brief description my boss knew exactly who he was-turns out that one of the interesting stories that he didn't get to during the race was the one where he sailed down the Hudson River on a raft made of empty bleach bottles. I never said that us marathoners were normal now did I! We left the bike path behind at mile 17 and entered the town of Cohoes, running for 3-4 miles through city streets once again. Well it was at about mile 18 that I started hitting the "wall". Mentally the end seemed so far off, and after already running for 3 hours another hour and a half seemed an eternity! Well fortunately after not seeing my "fans" for several miles we were now in a place where they could see me and cheer me on continually, at one point driving along the same road that I was running on with the windows rolled down blowing kazoos! This was by far the hardest part of the race for me and I started questioning whether 2 races so close was such a good idea. So I downed my remaining power gel at mile 20 (yuck!!) and dug deep. I said good bye to Ryan, Nikki, and Dan at mile 21, looking pretty rough and knowing I wouldn't see them until the finish line.
With 5 miles to go I left the town of Watervliet and was back on a bike path along the Hudson River. Shortly after I started to get some strength back. Whether because of my last power gel, or maybe adrenaline kicking in, or the fact that up to this point I had run at a very slow training pace, I didn't care....I knew that I was going to finish strong! And...so I did!
Boy was Ryan surprised! In just under 5 hours I crossed the finish line, feeling great! I did exactly what I set out to do, to finish strong so I could set my sights in Cape Cod in 3 weeks.
The End (finally)
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