Today was the day the Finns were waiting for. The NYC Marathon (like all marathons) is a 26.2 miles race that (unlike other marathons) takes the runners through all five boroughs of NYC. The runners start on the Verizano Bridge in Staten Island, they run to Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and finally Manhattan finishing in Central Park. It was a cool day, but a pretty good day for running - a little too windy at some points. We had discussed what everyone would be wearing and we had made a plan to try to see them between miles 16 1/2 and 17. We got an approximate time that they should arrive, if they ran the pace they expected. We said we would be on the West side of 1st Ave. Having never been to the NYC meaning we didn't know the course, and knowing that there were 40,000 runners, we were skeptical that we would succeed in seeing them, but we decided to try. Again we took the NJ Transit bus into Times Square. We took a subway to Central Park and we watched the top women come in. We saw the top three finishers. I was able to get photos of #1 and #2, but my camera wouldn't cooperate with getting a photo of #3 - who just happened to be the top American, Kara Goucher, who is from Duluth!! In her marathon debut she became the 1st American to grace the podium at the NYC Marathon in 14 years. She also had the best debut race time in that marathon ever. What a thrill to have "been there" - guess I'll just have to remember it since it's not documented for all time.
Walking up 5th Avenue, we leisurely made our way from Central Park to 65th Street. We stumbled upon temple Emmanu-El (which is the first Reform congregation in NYC). The beauty of the building rivals any Cathedral I've ever seen. From there we made our way to the race course on 1st Avenue. As we got close to the course it was clear that it would not be easy to get to the edge of the street. We walked up a few blocks and staked out the spot we would stay to try to fill-in as people left when their runner went buy. It was not yet 12:30 when we got there, and we expected the runners to come by about 1:00 p.m. We started to look for them - watching for a man and woman running together both wearing white hats. Kevin tried to get a spot earlier on the route so he could spot them and call us, but before I ever heard from him we saw them - well two of them, Ulla and Antti were running together. Olli ran alone. I even was able to get a picture (Ulla is in the middle and you can almost see Antti's face behind the runner in the I love Harlem shirt)!
It was very fun! We stayed a bit to see if we could find Olli, but it turns out he had already run by. We had tickets to see Wicked at 3:00 p.m. so we left to make our way back to the theater. We had gotten the tickets the day before and we were SO lucky. We were in the 4th row in the center section. It was fantastic!! The show was wonderful - although the leads didn't seem to sing as well as the ones we remembered from Chicago. Nevertheless we enjoyed it immensely! It's definitely better when you have the soundtrack memorized. After the show we went to dinner at Pongsai - a Thai restaurant in the theater district, and I had (surprise, surprise) Shrimp Pad Thai. It was very good. We got home fairly early that night - in time for Kevin to use the nightly free drink available at Embassy Suites. We watched some TV and relaxed. It was a great day!
2 comments:
Wow, good job documenting your trip! I'm terrible about starting to tell about a trip and then petering out.
Sounds like a great time--how fun that you knew people in the marathon! I just ate lunch, but all of the food descriptions make me want to go looking for a snack.
I still have one day left - but I hope to get it all down so I can remember it myself :-).
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