Posting from the RTW archives

This is the second year that I've lived on the ING NYC Marathon course. As the runners pass up 1st avenue, it reminded me of this...

Volume CCL - Run, Squirrel, Run

When I was in high school I was on the track team for 4 days. Ok, maybe that's a slight exaggeration... it was more like 2 days. Which, incidentally, was just long enough to weasle my Dad into buying me a new pair of running sneakers in anticipation of his soon to be track and field star offspring Jessica Joyner Kersee. I wanted to be a sprinter. Or more accurately I just wanted a cool varsity jacket, sprinting was simply the means to achieve that dream. Ya know, run 100 meters as fast as you can and be done. Easy as pie. That's most likely the longest I could run before getting blinding side cramps and falling over, so it seemed like a winner of an idea. How hard could this be, right? However, during our first practice, the coaches instructed us to run all the way to the park and back. Say what?! I thought I was a sprinter? I am not a distance runner! Needless to say, that was when I realized the track team was not for me. Hence when I went to watch part of the New York City Marathon, I was in complete awe. It's like watching 85,000 crazy lunatics. Those people are nuts. Absolutely nuts. Could you imagine me running 26.2 miles? Do I look Kenyan to you? I don't even think I'd make it across the Verrazanno Bridge without asking God to kill me about a hundred times. But hey, at least I'd have an excuse to wear those cute little running undies that somehow seem to pass as shorts...
I went with my friends Nicole and Sari to watch at the 22 mile marker in Harlem. Yes, you read that correctly, I went to Harlem. It was at about the 4 hour point, which means the super-human winners who finished in 2 hours already had their award ceremonies and were at home showering. These were the regular people who finish in a more average time. I wonder how long it would literally take me to finish. 4 days? You think I'm kidding. The only people to cheer me on would be commuters going to work on Wednesday morning. At what point do you just call it quits? When you are face first on the pavement with a mouth full of gravel? Do you think there are marathon officials whose job it is to tell you at 9:00 PM that maybe you should just take a cab to the finish line before they start tearing it down? How embarrassing! I would definitely come in last. If there are 85,000 entrants, I would probably come in 85,050th, beaten even by stray dogs and random pedestrians. By the fifth hour, even we were tired... simply from cheering. Sari was losing her voice. I had miraculously mastered the mysterious art of clapping but not making a sound. There were people running by in costumes. At one point Nicole screamed "go bear... or squirrel... go squirrel!" How do you run in a full body squirrel costume? These were clearly not the serious athletes. Not like I have any right to talk. When the track coach told us to run to the park, I ran to TCBY and had some fro yo...

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