Sally wrote to me earlier this year to tell me she was in the lottery to run the New York marathon. Did I want to join her for the trip?
“Think about it,” she said. I thought maybe 30 seconds before saying an enthusiastic yes. It had been more than a decade since I visited New York. I couldn’t quite recall when I was last there? Did I house-sit for Karen or travel there for a yoga workshop or a gig? For much of the aughts, I seemed to come up with a reason to visit at least once a year. Then my life got more settled down. Then the pandemic scrambled everything.
In any case, it had been a while and I was more than ready to return. Plus I’d never been to New York during its marathon week.
Fifty-thousand entrants, many traveling with family, are hard to miss. The city was crawling with other runners. They were taking practice runs in the park, in restaurants, on elevators and at the Javits Center, where I went with Sally to pick up her badge and walk through the race expo.
Being around all the athletes reminded me a bit of my time covering triathlon races in the 90s when I competed in bike races and worked for Inside Triathlon. All that focus and nervous energy and fitness level of bodies was very familiar. Only now, I had no clue about the professional field and little responsibility other than to cheer on a friend. Other than that, the race was all metaphor for me, which I told Karen, over dinner at The Mermaid Inn the evening prior. Going for something hard and finishing it, and then working to improve on it. It doesn't matter the form — running, writing, music — that process is all the same.
I met Karen at a writing workshop in Colorado in the late 1990s just as we both were radically changing our lives. Race reporting had led me to creative writing, and at the time, Karen and I were both working on short stories. We would meet up again in San Francisco, where she’d soon move toward poetry and I would start songwriting. Eventually she moved to New York, but we’ve stayed in touch. It’s always great to catch up with her, especially knowing the several marathons worth of creative effort we’ve made in the decades since our paths first intersected.
We spent the late afternoon wandering art galleries in Chelsea, starting with Maira Kalman's "Women Holding Things." Many of Kalman’s subjects — Woman Holding Opinions About Modern Art, Woman Holding a Pink Ukulele Under a Giant Cherry Tree — reminded me of my friends. After, we walked by the boat-filled Hudson River before heading to 10th Ave, stopping into 192 Books while we waited for our table at the restaurant. With titles such as “Art Is Life” and “The Art of Not Sitting Pretty” on prominent display, browsing the store’s tabletops was fortifying in and of itself.
The Mermaid Inn felt like a party. We sat outside in the light-bedecked parklet drinking happy hour red wine and eating butter lettuce salad and salmon. We were slow to pay the check but no one seemed to mind. The waiter swung by our table and dropped off two small chocolate pot de cremes “on the house.”
I don't know if it was the chocolate, the energy of the city, or the crackling nerves of all the marathoners in the hotel preparing for their race, but I was too wired to sleep much. I even woke up before Sally, paranoid for her that she'd failed to set her alarm, which of course she didn’t.
On race day, Sally got up well before dawn, fueling for the long day ahead and assembling her gear before taking the subway, ferry and bus to the starting line on Staten Island. She left me a clear, plastic full of the things she'd want after the race.
The New York marathon app was an amazingly detailed and very helpful tool for fans and spectators. Type in a bib number and it showed a runner's start time, splits, position on the course. Tap a mile marker and it suggested viewing spots along the course, a subway route to get there, as well as places to eat nearby. It even alerted you as to whether you had time to get to the next spot before your friend was on course to arrive. Provided cell service wasn’t compromised by all of the other spectators using it out on the course, one could easily track a runner from start to finish.
I made a plan to meet another friend who lived on the East Coast, Ellen, in Park Slope before Sally was scheduled to reach mile 7. Now based in Baltimore, Ellen had lived in New York in the early 90s, when she herself ran the race. It was not only great to see her, she was the perfect person to spectate with.
When I exited the subway in Brooklyn, I found a garage band was playing Rolling Stones covers; vendors selling popsicles from carts, and lines forming outside any open sidewalk cafe. By 10:30am, it was already hot and humid. I immediately realized I was overdressed in jeans and a T-shirt. But where I was slightly uncomfortable, the conditions were brutal for the runners out on the course. Later, I read that Sunday was the warmest November 6 ever recorded in New York’s Central Park.
Ellen arrived — dressed appropriately for the weather and wearing her 1992 finishers medal to get into the spirit of things — and we positioned ourselves on the sidewalk, checking the app map to see Sally’s approach. But as the app showed her reaching our position, she was with such a large wave of other runners we completely missed recognizing her! This was going to be harder than I thought.
We chose another mile marker to watch on the Upper East Side and wended our way down the crowded sidewalk to catch the nearest local train. The subways were packed. Many held signs with their friends' names on them. Some had made large popsicle-like signs with their friend or family member’s blown up photograph.
Our next stop, at First Ave and 77th, was even more crowded than Park Slope, but orderly. An informal queue system for a good position at the fence had formed so that once a viewer’s tracked runner passed by, they moved out so the next fan could move forward to find their person. This time, when Sally came down the road, we were ready. As soon as we caught sight of her, we started screaming her name so that she actually saw us, too. I was surprised at how moved I was to see her! All of the emotion and energy of the runners, some flying past, some clearly struggling… finding my friend amid it all felt like finding a treasure. Plus she was running great!
Ellen and I consulted the map again and concluded mile 25 would be a good next and final stop. We walked over to 5th Ave and toward the south end of Central Park. Even before we intersected the course again, we could hear the roar of the crowd's cheers wafting over the trees.
By mile 25, the sky was full of clouds and a light rain had begun to fall. Still, the heat and miles were taking their toll. The parade of runners moved at every pace imaginable: some people were running strong, others were walking, or hobbling. We watched as an ambulance made its way slowly down the promenade, lights flashing. Then Sally came by, still running and smiling. As she rounded the second to last bend before the finishing stretch, Ellen and I cued up the app so we watched her cross the finish line virtually.
Later, when we went out for dinner, Sally wore her 2022 finishers medal and people stopped her on the street to congratulate her. Yay Sally!