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I was very surprised by how emotional the race was for me. There were many moments when I was teary-eyed. In particular, running by my high school in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Technical HS) and LIC, which is near where I grew up.
Rich was with me the entire way. I fell the morning of the marathon outside my front door. The wind had blown over some Halloween decorations and I tripped over them in the dark. I skinned my knee and it was swollen but I told myself I would ignore it and battle through. Needless to say it made a windy challenging day more challenging.
But Rich gave me a boost at 13.1 miles. He was a huge Bon Jovi fan and as we passed the midpoint of the race a guy to the right of me belted out as loud as he could "Oh, we're halfway there . . . Livin' on a prayer."
After that, I popped up and though I was limping, I battled through. And was thrilled that despite the weather, my fall and stopping frequently to enjoy every minute, I finished in the range of my goal time.
The worst part of the race for me was waiting three hours to start running in the start village with the cold windy weather. That was brutal.
Perhaps the best thing that came out of this, is after the Daily Voice covered this story, a woman from New Rochelle reached out to me. Her son was diagnosed with Marfan's and had open heart surgery recently. As we emailed back and forth, it turns out our boys were in elementary school class together. That made the run more special and more moving. There was no way I was not crossing the finish line.
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