I'm posting this blog a little out of order...I still have to finish my big summer trip blog, but I figured I would get this one out of the way first.
My friend Jeanette is running a marathon/half marathon in every state. Back in 2021 or late 2020, she signed up for the NYC marathon through the lottery. She got into the marathon! She let me know that it could be possible for me to get in as well. So, I signed up with a charity called Team for Kids.
So, what was happening in 2021 (I believe) is that the marathon was trying to get people back to running and attending the event after the pandemic pretty much killed all running races. They had some really good offers in 2021 where if you ran the NYC marathon virtually, then you would receive a non-complementary entry to the 2022 NYC marathon in person.
What I needed to do for Team for Kids, was sign up and run the NYC marathon virtually in 2021 (which cost around $250ish) and raise $750 for them. I had a couple of friends donate, which was really amazing, but if you don't raise all the money then you need to pay the difference. I ended up having to pay around $550, but it was for a good cause so I was ok with it.
The next step was to run the NYC marathon virtually in 2021 in order to get my entry for 2022. They were VERY specific on how the virtual race needed to be ran. I had a 2 week window in Oct/Nov of 2021 to complete the race. I had to use the Strava App to record my race route and time. I had to join the Strava NYC virtual marathon group on Strava so they could properly monitor that I had completed the virtual marathon. They actually said that if you even run 0.01 miles shy of 26.2 then you will not get your entry for the 2022 race. I was so scared that I would screw up my one and only chance to run this race. Jeanette suggested that the best way to run virtually would be to sign up for another marathon and run it. So, in order to complete my NYC virtual marathon in 2021, I ended up running the Indianapolis marathon on Nov 6, 2021. When I finished that marathon, I stopped my Strava and submitted my time and distance. Everything went through and in March of 2022 I got the entry to the NYC marathon! (Which was another almost $300). By this point I was around $1200 into this race. There was no way I was going to miss this race no matter what!
Finally, the time had come! On Friday, November 4th I flew out of Grand Rapids super early to fly into Newark, NJ. Once I arrived, I had a lot of time before Jeanette arrived and before we could get into our hotel. I took the train from Newark to Penn station in Manhattan. Then I took to train from there to Times Square. It was easy enough, but it was such a pain in the butt dragging around my luggage! Lesson Learned! Anyway, I finally got to the hotel, I dropped off my luggage and decided that I had enough time to do one thing before Jeanette and her mom arrived. I hopped back on the train and headed down to the World Trade Center museum. I had been there before, but I figured I would check it out again since it's an important memorial.
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| One World Trade Center Building |
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| One of the sides of the memorial showing the names of the people who lost their lives when the buildings came crashing down. |
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| A portion of the antenna that sat atop one of the original buildings. There are a lot more things to see in the museum, but they don't allow you to take pictures. There are a lot of 'personal affects' that were recovered (wallets, phones, shoes, watches, clothing, etc). There are voice recordings that you can listen to from the airplane and from the buildings. They have a lot of the original 'missing' posters too. It is very heavy, but very important to see. |
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| This man is standing next to one of the rear ends of a fire truck that was on the scene that day. The back half of the truck is melted from the heat. He told his story on how he was working as a fire fighter that day. He was in one of the buildings when it collapsed. He was the only one from his unit that was rescued alive that day. He said it took them an hour or two to get him out of the rubble. He is retired now, but he volunteers his time at the museum to tell people about what happened to him that day. I wish I caught his name because he deserves all the respect in the world. |
After the Museum, I hopped back on the train and met Jeanette and her mom over at the Runner Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
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| Jeanette and I at the NYC marathon expo picking up our numbers for the marathon and 5k |
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| This is what 50,000 names looks like...I couldn't fit all the billboards in one picture. |
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| Walking around in Times Square. I could spend hours here people watching. I've been here a couple of times before, but it's always a trip just being in Times Square. |
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| I don't know what law has changed since the last time I was in NYC, but there were a LOT of people selling fake bags along the street around the Time's Square area. |
After the expo, Jeanette and her mom and I went to dinner at Hard Rock cafe, then we walked back to the hotel to get some sleep before our 5k race the next morning.
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| The 5k route |
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| Jeanette and I waiting for the Abbott Dash 5k to start. We started at the United Nations |
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| We didn't get a medal for finishing the 5k, but we got an apple. So that was our prize! |
After our 5k, we walked back to the hotel and got ready to attend Funny Girl
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| Lea Michele starred in Funny Girl. It was a great play! |
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| The singing waitresses at Friedman's at the Edison Hotel. Great food and entertainment. |
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel so Jeanette and I could rest and prepare for the next day's event.
We got up around 6ish, ate and prepared to head downtown. We walked over to the subway and got on the train. The train was packed with runners heading to the ferry. Once we reached the end of the line, we got out and made our way to get on the ferry.
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| Off to ride the ferry from Manhattan island to Staten Island! The number of people was astounding! |
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| The Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. The first leg of the NYC marathon crosses this bridge. |
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Waiting with the other runners to get on a bus to take us to Fort Wadsworth where the starting village was. At this point in time, the élite runners and first wave runners had already started! I could not wrap my head around the volume of runners that were still heading to the starting line.
Once we got on the bus and arrived at the entrance to the starter village, we all had to go through security like at an airport. Once we were checked, then we could enter. |
By the time we arrived at the starter village, it was around 10-1030. Jeanette had a start time of 11 and I had a start time of 11:30. We didn't have much time to wait around, but by this point thousands of runners had already spent time and passed through the start village. The place looked like a refugee camp! There was stuff abandoned everywhere!
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| One of many many many many clothing donation boxes for all the clothes that people abandoned before the race. |
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| Waiting for the race to start |
Once the race started, I did not bother to take any pictures. We were not allowed to wear hydration vests, so I put my phone in an arm band which made it too difficult to take in and out to get pictures. I was allowed to wear a hydration belt (go figure). I had a 14oz water bottle, some energy chews, salt tabs and wipes for emergencies. I only had to pee once (yeah!) the entire race. The race was really well supported. There were bathrooms and water almost every single mile.
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| Jeanette's sister/niece/mom were at a couple of different points along the route and caught a picture of me running. |
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| Jeanette was paying attention when she passed by her family. |
My overall thought of the race was this: I have never experienced anything like it before in my life. I am not exaggerating when I say that there were people yelling and cheering and drinking and holding signs for the entire 26 miles! I could not hear my music over the cheers of the crowd for 26 miles.!!! I thought it was because the weather was very warm that weekend, but a friend of mine said that every NYC marathon is like that regardless of the weather. It's like a celebration the entire city participates in. Besides the number of people on the sidelines cheering, it's incredible to see that many runners. Even though they try and space everyone out over a 4 hour time frame, I was still dodging people as I ran. The only time when there were not droves of people on the streets cheering is when we ran through a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. No one was on the sidewalk cheering. They were all just going about their business like nothing was happening. It was the only time during the race that I could hear my headphones! haha
And in addition to the runners and spectators, there are the volunteers. So many volunteers and police handing out water, managing lines of people, moving people in the right direction. They really have it down to a science on how to manage 50,000 runners in one day. And although I thought it was an amazing experience, I'm not sure I would want every single marathon to be this intense of a situation. But I'm so glad I did it!
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Look at all the people finishing at the same time as me!
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| Me at the finish! Sweating like crazy on November 5th! |
After I finished the race, I slowly made my way through Central Park following the herds of other people finishing and making their way to meet up with family. Jeanette had found her family and friends and was waiting for me to join them. As I was walking along, I heard an announcer all of a sudden say: "Hey, we have Jeanette here from Detroit Michigan! She wants me to say to Amy Dickinson to hurry her butt up!". I almost died!  |
| Jeanette and I. We did it!!! We got these really great ponchos too! They have a fleece blanket on the inside. They were so great to have at the end to keep warm! |
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| I thought I did pretty good for having to dodge people the entire way. AND considering it was in the 70s the entire race, which is extremely warm. AND considering I was not able to run with my normal race vest. |
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| This picture was probably taken at 8pm at night. It was 72 degrees on November 5th in New York!!! |
After the race, we hobbled back South to Midtown where our hotel was. We showered and got ready to go out to dinner. I told Jeanette that all I could manage to do was put on Crocs to go out. She said that she could only handle wearing socks with sandals. haha. Anyway, we went to a nice dinner right in Time's square, then went back to the hotel to crash. The next morning, I didn't get up until 7ish, I packed and called an Uber to drive me back to the Newark Airport. Jeanette and her family had another day to relax and tour NYC before they left. I made it back to GR without incident. Another fun marathon adventure with Jeanette in the books!
