NYCM2002 - Ellen Hasbrouck

Race Report

New York City Marathon

Sunday, November 3, 2002

Each time I run NYCM it seems to get more fun! Yesterday was just a blast! The energy along the course was so amazing that you'd really have to see it to believe it. It was way slower than I hoped for (so what else is new?) but the day held a lot of surprises and Ken and I finished very happy but very cold! As always, hanging out in the Penguin Condo at Fort Wadsworth was a worthy start to the day.

Many many many thanks to Kathryn and Carlene who were ALL OVER the course. I can't even figure out how you got to so many places but you made us laugh every time we saw you.

Hi Guys, One of the things I love about marathons is there are so many stories attached to them. Yesterday Ken and I went to the "bragathon brunch" at the 2nd Ave Deli with Cher & Milt, Mary D, J'net, Harriet and Daniel. Although we all ran the same course we had entirely different experiences and it's so much fun to hear how other people met the challenges of the course. I can't wait to read the rest of the stories from all the penguins who were on the course (running or screaming) Sunday! My Story: The week before the marathon was very harried for me. In addition to all the fun penguin and NYRRC events, my mother and father-in-law were in town and I had a lot of family commitments to tend to. Under ordinarly circumstances this would have been great, but this week it just created a lot of scheduling conflicts that added to the stress of taper madness. Fortunately I did get to some of the penguin events and had a glorious day showing Marjorie and David Mulally around NYC. The Friendship Run and cruise on Saturday were fun although Mary's snow dance was a little too effective! The good thing about having such a busy week is that by Saturday night I was exhausted. Ken and I ended up having a relatively early (for us) dinner and I was asleep by midnight. I slept like a baby and woke up feeling reasonably confident that my day would be a good one. A couple of cups of coffee later I was ready to face the buses so Ken and I left for the 1 mile walk to the Public Library. It was beautiful! The sun was just rising and as we walked uptown we were joined by groups of runners--mostly foreign--who were all beginning their own marathon adventures. The bus line was endless but it moved quickly. I got a quick hug from Paulette as our part of the line snaked by her part of the line but that was the end of my Penguin contact until we pulled into the penguin condo at Fort Wadsworth an hour later. I know a lot of people hated the wait at the start of the race, but I enjoyed it. I had brought a book but never got a chance to read it. Instead I chatted with the penguins, put my name on my shirt, and generally just soaked up the prerace energy of the crowd. Penguins were coming and going from the tent and I think I saw just about everyone at some point before the race. And of course I spent about half the morning in the portapotty lines! My only real concern was that I hadn't yet found my sister, who was supposed to meet me before the start of the race. This is a bit of an aside to my story, but it's sort of key to explaining why this race meant so much to me. My (older) sister Barb was the first person I ever knew to run a marathon. This was way back in the early 80s when only a few people did anything that crazy! I thought she was superwoman--and I still think that! She was the person who got Ken into running, and several years later she was the one that got me to finally give in and take it up as well. The day I ran my first non-stop mile I went directly home and called Barb to tell her. The next morning she showed up at my doorstep with a copy of Joan Samuelson's "Running for Women". When I confided to her that I wanted to run a marathon she never said "you can't do that". Instead she said "ok, here's what you have to do" and laid out a year-long plan to get me to the finish line. That was 5 years ago and although I have run 7 marathons now, she had not run a marathon in this time because of various conflicts and injuries. But this was to be the year that both of us would run NYC! I knew that we wouldn't finish this race together--she's still way faster than me--but we planned to start it together. I can't begin to tell you how much it meant to me to line up at the start of this race with both Ken and Barb! So, back to the Penguin condo. Maybe 10 minutes before I was set to leave for the starting line, Barb wanders into our tent. Finally! She was totally calm but mentioned that she was wearing the wrong shoes. Turns out that she was kind of hurried when she left her apartment and put on her cross-training shoes rather than her running shoes. This is so typical of Barb (who once ran a whole marathon in shoes she borrowed from a complete stranger because she forgot to pack hers) that all I could do was laugh. She was good enough to snap a bunch of pictures of the whole penguin crowd then we headed off for one last porta-potty stop. This took so long that we just had time to join the back of the back of the line before the cannon went off. It took us 10 minutes to get to the starting line, but once we were there we found that the crowd thinned out quickly and we were able to make it over the bridge (2 miles) in under 24 minutes. I felt great! Barb and I were just chattering away and Ken was right behind us adding a comment or two every few minutes. By the time we hit 4th Avenue in Brookllyn I felt like I was floating. The miles were so easy and the crowd was so energized that it just didn't feel like work. Barb and I continued to chat all the way down 4th Ave. I skipped a lot of my walk breaks because they seemed so unnecessary. I think Ken made a couple of half-hearted attempts to slow us down, but of course I didn't listen. Even as I write this I'm saying "what was I THINKING?" LOL. In any event, I had about 8 of the most fun miles I've ever had! We saw Carlene & Kathryn around mile 3 and El somewhere along there too. People were yelling my name and I was yelling back and life was great. Barb decided to speed up around the 10k point and we wished her a good race. I still felt fine. Somewhere around 9 miles, Ken said he was really cold. I looked at him and he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. Uh oh. He had on shorts and a cotton t-shirt. Not good. I was ok in shorts and a coolmax t-shirt, but I was beginning to be conscious that the temps seemed to be cooling and the sun was not as bright as it had been. I had a long-sleeve thermal top tied around my waist though, so I knew when I had to I could put it on. Ken didn't want to wear it, so we eventually stopped in a store along the route to see if he could find something warm to buy. There was nothing there but a woman told me about a store a couple of blocks on that maybe would have something. He finally found an ear warmer which seemed to help for awhile. I was still feeling pretty good and aside from being worried about Ken, I wasn't in any particular discomfort. We reached the halfway point at around 2:57, which was a little later than I hoped but I wasn't stressing about it. More importantly, the sun came out again just as we headed down the bridge into Queens, so things were looking up once more. We were in pretty good spirits until we hit the 59th Street bridge at mile 15. This is always the low point of my race. The bridge is long and ugly and all uphill. On top of that there is no sun because we were on the lower level, and the wind was blowing right off the river. By this time I was seriously cooling down too. Ken and I agreed to pass the time by taking turns whining (creatively) about the bridge :-) That passed the time until we got to the top. On the way down Ken decided to stop at the medical area and get himself wrapped up in a mylar blanket. From then on I always knew exactly where he was because he rattled when he moved. Ken assured me he could finish as long as he stayed warm enough so that was the plan from mile 16 on. First Ave was definitely a morale booster. There were still crowds and just being back in Manhattan was excellent. The best part, though, was seeing my 8 y/o niece Katie (Barb's daughter) a little past mile 17. She gave us each a hug and a kiss and told us that Barb had passed by earlier and was doing very well. That cheered me immeasurably so we continued on in much better spirits. We saw Kathryn and Carlene again around mile 19 and that was great! Kelly passed us around there too and I got a hug from her. From this point on it was just one foot in front of the other. I am all too familiar with this method of marathoning, so I knew we'd make it as long as Ken didn't succumb to hypothermia. He was doing much better in his mylar cocoon, so we just headed off for our brief visit to the Bronx and then back to Manhattan for the final 5 miles. Harlem was kind of fun. I guess it must be survival of the fittest, but the spectators left on the course at this point were the real die-hards. We bantered back and forth with them and I loved the "girlfriend, you know I'll hunt you down if you don't finish" from one enthusiastic fan. All the aid stations were still up and it was nice to know we were almost within sight of Central Park. That meant we were almost done! When we finally got into the park the sun was setting and I was truly freezing. But by that time we were almost home and we just had to hang in for a couple more miles. After rounding the southern end of the park on 59th Street, we headed for the finish line. Ken threw away the mylar blanket and I took off my thermal shirt and wrapped it around my neck in some bizarre belief that we'd look studly in our finish line photo. We collected medals, more mylar blankets, and turkey sandwiches right beyond the finish line. I was too tired to unwrap my sandwich all the way and had a real taste sensation when I took a huge bite out of the little plastic mustard packet that I didn't realize was wrapped in with the sandwich. It was a good way to get my attention. Unfortunately we had to wait forever for our bags but we did run into Marjorie and David while we waited and that was a really nice way to end a very long day. A subway ride, five flights of stairs, and a bottle of champagne completed the saga of Marathon 7. Barb called to tell me she finished happy in 5:21. She was a few minutes off her goal, but generally ecstatic that she finished her first marathon in 5 years. She's still my hero. So overall, this is another story with a very happy ending. Tomorrow I'll start thinking about Disney. --Ellen/NYC