Seems fitting that the last post I did was nearly two years ago, to the anniversary of the NYC Marathon. Here I am, returning to these pages of my personal running history, documenting the beginning of the journey to the 2014 NYC Marathon.
The effect was not lost on me when I got the email congratulating me on my lottery-drawn win - I was standing near Astor Place, about to hop on the 6 train downtown and, scrolling through my lit of new emails on my phone, saw the announcement. I gasped aloud and, in retrospect, probably startled some people with having a very public personal moment. I immediately called home and squealed with excitement with my sister hopping up and down on the other end of the line, sharing in the news.
The question was, however, am I actually going to do this?
The questions, mind you, was not, am I actually going to do this AGAIN - it's truly a choice this year based on solidarity.
The initial impetus to enter the lottery spurred from a teary goodbye this past winter, as two of my dear International House friends were leaving NYC for sunny Australia. In a promise to keep in touch and visit each other, we decided to enter the NYC marathon lottery, in hopes that chance would reunite us. "If we get in, we can always postpone a year!", I said, allying any hesitations they had about the timing of the race. So we entered, and so it happened that chance gave us a little nudge, as two out of the three of us were drawn from the pool this week. In some fervid WhatsApp messenging, they urged me to run it without them, as they would both postpone the winning entrant's place, and reapply next year as well.
So here we go again. This time for a renowed race that marks my nearly 10th year of living in the Big Apple.
Pretty good reason to run, regardless, hey?
