NYC Marathon 2022.

Fundraising Snippet that I wrote in December 2021

I started running when I was 15.

My high school - Miss Porter's - required each of us to fulfill a sport's participation. I sucked at sports that involve a ball, so Cross Country was the last option.

I never imagined myself running, but that's where life takes you, to places that you'd never think of. To a sport of suffering and pain, it is to be in pain and to feel what I understood as the deepest corner of myself. It necessitates time, patience, and places me to a path that I need to continue no matter what, just to get back to where I started.

In running, I met many lifelong friends that have inspired me, I thought of ideas that I would never have otherwise. I encountered myself and learned to be with myself in silence, to be okay to be alone, and to repeat seeing the same scenery everyday.

The year of 2021 is a year of me being stuck, stuck in a country, stuck in a dynamic. I gave up running because of work and physical tiredness. I was disappointed to see myself only able to run at a pace of 9:30 on a treadmill. And I thought, maybe this is how life happens, things need to change and evolve, right?

Then the stuckness broke, and I'm on the move again. I'm glad that I picked up my promises to myself. I would never give up running and philosophy in my life.

So this year, I decided to commit and run the NYC Marathon, to fulfill a dream I have had for more than eight years. I hope your donation can be part of the journey, and I will share my thoughts during training and the marathon more frequently. I also hope that by raising fund for Rising New York Road Runners – NYRR’s free youth program and events platform – designed to help kids of all ages and abilities to build confidence, gain motivation, and develop healthy attitudes toward physical activity that last for life, they can experience what I have felt.

To be part of a journey, you can follow my marathon music playlist here. I will add more songs as I go along.

The Run

Every city has its sensation. And running is the best way to get to know a city than touring around.

If Farmington's sensation is a crisp morning wind, Boston's is a salty crouching sun, London's is a foggy yellow pavement, then New York's is congregated people on grass fields on a Friday afternoon.

But I should say more accurately that that in particular is about Central Park, where I trained for my marathon for the most part, from three miles all the way to 20 miles.

The 2022 NYC Marathon is totally different from Central Park's running, although its last three miles ends in the park. The associated image consists of a steamed, dizzy mid-afternoon with precisely cut straight turns revealing halal foodtrucks and bombarding noises.

I typically do not like people cheering and watching me race. In high school XC races, I prefer courses that are hidden in woods narrow enough for only two people to pass. I also think running is not a sport that should be cheered. Cheering makes it lose its purpose.

NYC Marathon is the opposite of a solo trail in the woods. It's continously filled with people on both sides of streets. Crowds spanned the entire 26.2-mile course passing five boroughs. They were so loud that I couldn't hear my Shokz headphones at the maximum level.

To some degree I really disliked the course, so much so that I answered with a no when I asked myself if I would run it again (but that shouldn't count because it was a question posed at the finishing six miles, naturally painful). The things I didn't like include onion-smelling armpits exacerbated on a hot humid day, mixed with hot dogs that I couldn't tell if the smell came from bodies or food. The crowd was also annoying besides the loud cheering. When entering Central Park, the path became five-people width as the crowd closed in.

Meb said NYC Marathon is a course that one would prefer it to be the first and the last of its experience, but shortly regret after. It was an accurate statement. Challenging in many aspects, the course profile has big elevation changes going from bridge to bridge, and the difficulty increases in the latter half. November 6th, 2022 was a day of 20 degrees Celsius and 80% humidity. This condition made it harder to run an ideal pace and to properly fuel (water and sugar).

I had a very high anticipation of the marathon day, mostly because of all of the miles I put in for training. This was my second marathon, but my first time religiously following a training plan, dedicatedly doing the painful long runs on weekends. With more efforts put in, I changed my original goal of just finishing to finishing in a good time. I knew I was not going to PR but hoped to be near 4:15:00.

I was nervous one month before the marathon day that my mind numbed itself during the last week. I was not nauseous and having a fast heartbeat until the night before the race. All of a sudden I could feel my heart pounding, at a pace that’s 1.5x faster than my usual. Then I woke up and slept and woke up many times, until it was 3:45am, 15 minutes before my scheduled wake up time.

I forced myself to eat a bagel with peanut butter and banana, but couldn’t finish. I don’t know if it’s due to nervousness or I simply ate too much the night before. I better not eat anymore or I would throw up. But as I was sitting in the start village, I was concerned of my food waste. What a pity to the flour and peanuts. The mind could pick up the smallest detail wanting the world to turn perfect.

It was a journey to get to Staten Island. I took a Uber, then a ferry, then a bus, then walked to the start village. I waited for two hours and finished Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea before race. 45 minutes before my wave (Wave 2 Corral E) started, I donated my hoodie and the book, rubbed a tube of sample sunscreens, and chucked half a bottle of water.

I lined up and the gun went off, accompanied by Frank Sinatra's New York, New York that I stupidly thought he was still alive and would perform live. I ran on the bottom level of the Verrazzano Bridge. To the left through metal frames was the World Trade Center and the south tip of Manhattan. It was already beginning to get hot and I told myself, this is starting.

Deep Brooklyn consists of walk-up houses. Families took chairs out to watch the marathon with a few beers. That was a good chunk of seven miles. Then the course led us into Williamsburg with a few tall building that I mistook as LIC's. I thought that was fast but then I saw B62's bus stops and I realized I was not yet there.

The peak of Pulaski Bridge was the half-way point. I entered LIC with a familiarity. It was nice to pass by where I live. It started drizzling when I got onto the Queensboro Bridge. It was my first time running on the driving lanes of the bridge, and the frame of Queensboro was constructed with thicker and more yellow metals than Verrazzano's. On the left was Manhattan midtown with the Empire State building and the UN building reflecing the East River.

Getting off the bridge I reached the First Avenue, a straight and wide road heading North until the eye couldn't see Bronx. Mile 16 up was shamefully all challenging. With drizzles wetting the road and some slight heat baking the ground, I no longer remember if it was cold or hot. I remember I had to take a gel at mile 18, which I originally planned to hold off until mile 20. I also don't remember the reason I started walking. Was it elevation or the weather? Because I know my training should be able to take 20 miles, so I searched for external factors.

What felt like forwever were two moments. First from Willis Avenue Bridge to the Madison Avenue Bridge. It was so tough that I just thought Bronx sucked. Depressinly gray and brown buildings and old black fences with missing paint patches, although it was the second shortest borough to pass through, I felt like a random mouse placed in a random maze trying to get out.

The second moment was entering Manhattan and running alongside the skirt of Central Park. It was mostly flat and slightly downhill, so I could see the Chrysler Building on the 42nd street from 120ish street. Originally my race plan asked to pick up my pace for the final six miles and push through till the end, but my legs dragged and cramped on the inner thighs. With a decision that emerged the instant that I came to terms with it, I allowed myself to retreat from my 4:15:00 goal and just finish the race. I don't know if this was lacking mental toughness or a fair assessment of my condition, but I agreed with it without the regret of could I have run faster. That idea has not occurred to me at all until this moment as I'm writing. It is always an intricate balance between pushing and adjusting, because the limit forever remains unknown and perhaps more accurately, dynamic.

The Chrysler building's size did not change as I came nearer. The 30 streets that I passed were simply too short for a noticeable visual impact of a tall building. For the two miles that I could hold my sight onto, it became a fixated question and dissappearing hope - when would it look larger? At last it dissappeared from my sight as I entered Central Park.

I had not run Central Park loop in clockwise direction. I purposedly saved the experience for race day. For all of my training runs, I ran counter-clockwise. The route was so familiar to me that I knew exactly where a hill or a water station was coming up.

My favorite segment of Central Park was the south-west corner two miles. There the road widened with two columns of tall trees changing colors in the Fall. On the left I could see Sheep Meadow with groups of people lying on picnic rugs, lovers holding hands walking towards the exit. With a sense of almost finishing my long runs, it provided me with a romantic closure.

For the marathon, I ran that segment in reverse. Everything seemed strange and new. I could no longer predict where I was. Every step of the last mile was a struggle, that I had to squeeze the last bit of my mental energy to concentrate and overcome cramps. As soon as I slowed down, cramping became more severe. The 800m sign felt like a 1 mile sign, and the 400m sign felt like a half mile sign. Distance got distorted.

And that was the end, the finality when I crossed the finish line. There isn't much to write about there because all worthy miles were already spoken of.

Perhaps a few side notes on some surprising body reactions in the race on such a hot and humid day:

• At Mile 5 I had the urgent sense of urinating. This persisted until Mile 14 which forced me to go to a porta potty. This was the second time it has happened. The first time was after a 16-mile run, and I observed blood in my urine the second morning. This time I think it was partly due to the heat and emptying the bladder too early before the race that it affected negatively.
• At Mile 19 I had intense cramps on both of my inner thighs. During my first marathon, only one side cramped at Mile 21. The cramping worsensed when speed was reduced, so I had to push through and recite my XC team mantra: "Green Machine never walks" (although I broke it quite a bit this time).
• I took a total of four gels, including two isotopic gels that they distributed. To my surprise, they didn't give me any boosts. During my long training runs, I took only one gel once for a 20 miler and immediately felt the impact. It was quite interesting that they didn't work as well this time.
• It was so hot that I had to take almost three cups of water at each water station. At some stations I took one cup of Gatorade and another two cups of water. I never used this strategy of hydrating in my half marathons or marathon. I always alternate one cup of water with one cup of Gatorade each two miles.

The final question I had to ask myself: did I learn anything? Besides racing strategy tips that I reflected above, I think it is the acceptance of imperfection. It is to glide over unexpected problems and making the decision to step back without regret.

I finished with an ugly time of 4:44:58. Wobbling to find the exit of the course, I looked back on 72nd Street from the crosswalk of Columbus Avenue, and rushed for my boyfriend's and friends' hugs.

And I have to thank them for supporting me on this long journey. Over the course I have inflicted quite some painful mileage on Andrew. Maybe for a little bit, just a tiny bit, that I enjoyed being watched running.