Sorry for the delayed summary of NYC! Stephanie and I have been on vacation and we just returned yesterday. Ok, where to begin?

Upon arrival on Friday evening, things got off to a horrible start to our trip. We had originally planned to arrive in New York on Saturday afternoon, however, we found out after we had reservations that the Expo closed on Saturday at 5pm. I figured with our flight arriving at 1pm on Saturday that we were cutting it too close to come in on Saturday to get my bib. Stephanie had rented us an apartment for our trip which was awesome. However, the apartment wasn't available Friday night and hotel rooms were going for a fortune due to Halloween and the Marathon going on that weekend. Fortunately, Stephanie's cousin (Angie) lives in Manhattan and let us sleep on an air mattress at her apartment Friday night. This was a great plan until our arrival and we find out that she is sick! I mean really sick with a horrible cough, congestion, etc. I was freaking out. I had avoided germs like crazy all this time and now I'm going to be sleeping in a small Manhattan apartment with someone coughing up a long all night? Yikes.

I successfully avoided her Friday night and kept my distance so I thought I was good to go. I wake up nice and early Saturday morning and eager to get to the Expo. This is it! I was pumped and in a great mood and couldn't wait to soak in the expo. Then BAM! I stub the fourth toe on my left foot into the back leg of the couch. I thought it was broken. I was about to literally jump out the window I was so upset. I limped it off for a while and it throbbed all day. Fortunately, it wasn't broken but I did slice off all the skin on the inside of the toe. It hurt like heck. By this time, I just knew I was going to catch whatever Angie had and it was going to hit me the morning of the race. I also was still limping and trying to fight through all of the pain coming from the cut toe. It was throbbing and bleeding all day Saturday. I figured my race was going to be a disaster.

The Expo was pretty much the same as all other expos at other marathons except it had many, many more people. The English language was definitely not the main language at the Expo. The NYC Marathon prides itself on having an international field and about half the field comes from other countries. The primary languages I heard were French, Italian, some German, some Russian and/or eastern European languages. This event was sponsored by Asics so pretty much a full third of the expo was a huge store for Asics. I was like a kid in a candy store here and bought pretty much anything Asics with the NYC marathon logo on it. I'm going to be that dork you see all winter running in all of my NYC gear. I just couldn't help myself.

I had heard that there were going to be pace groups within the different waves and that you were to sign up for them at the expo. I made my way over to the pace group booth to sign up for the 3:50 pace group. Another aspect of this marathon is that there are three different waves at the start. Wave 1 starts at 9:40, Wave 2 at 10:00, and Wave 3 at 10:20. The purpose of the waves is to alleviate the congestion of simply releasing 43,000+ runners onto the streets of NY all at one time. Their goal was to put the fast runners in Wave 1, next fastest in 2, and the slower runners in Wave 3. For some crazy reason, I was put in Wave 3 with the slower runners. This was yet another strike against me doing well in this race. Anyway, back to the pace groups....so I tell the lady at the pace group table that I'd like to sign up for the 3:50 group. She asks my bib number and then says "I think you're going to have a problem." Not again! She said that the fastest pace group in Wave 3 was for 4:30!! I was really ticked off about this. The rule on the waves and corrals is that you can move backwards in the wave and/or corrals to run with a slower friend but no one is allowed to move up. There was absolutely no way they would let me move up to wave 2. Can anything else go wrong for me on this marathon?

Stephanie and I met the twins (Allison and Courtney) for a nice pasta dinner Saturday night. They said they were bringing a friend from Dallas that had moved to Connecticut. It turned out that I recognized him immediately upon our arrival. It was Neil Snowden who used to run with us back in the day when Greg was leading our running group! It was great to see Neil and the twins and we had a great time at dinner. After dinner, we all went our separate ways to get ready for our big day. It was Halloween night in New York and the city was nuts! Traffic was TERRIBLE and it was gridlock on every street. Everyone was dressed up in their costumes and the whole town was one big party. Traffic was so bad that it was basically worthless to take a cab as we were walking much faster than traffic. We ended up jumping on a rickshaw which was genious. The driver was CRAZY and he weaved through traffic and left the cabs in the dust. He got us to our apartment at least 15 minutes faster than a cab would have.

I spent the evening getting all my gear ready to go. Prepping for this race is a unique experience. First of all, it's a point to point race.

To get to the start, you must take public transportation to Staten Island. The majority of the participants were assigned to the Staten Island Ferry (including myself) to get you to the start. I boarded the ferry a little before 7am and it was already slammed. Ironically, I ended up sitting next to a girl from Euless of all places! This girl was NUTS. She does all her training on a treadmill! She never runs outside unless it's a race. NEVER! If that wasn't crazy enough, she had just completed a 50 mile (not a 50K) trail run just 10 days earlier!! I simply could not fathom doing a 20 miler on a stinking treadmill but I digress. Taking the ferry was really cool because it takes you right in front of the Statue of Liberty at sunrise which was an awesome sight and a great way to start the day.

Upon arrival in Staten Island, we boarded buses which were to take us to our "Villages". They have three color coded villages for you to go to until the start. These are based on your bib color. I was in the Blue Village (as was Sara).

Sara had arrived about an hour before I did since she was assigned an earlier Ferry than I was. If you do the math, you'd probably figure out that there were over 14,000 per village so I thought it was doubtful that I would find her. Would you believe that I found her within ten minutes of arrival? Crazy! Since she was assigned Wave 2 at 10:00, we hung out until she had to head to her corral.

Now that I was on my own for the next 20 minutes, it was time to start shedding all of my throwaway clothes. It's really wierd looking around at all of the clothes that were shed by the masses and just tossed around everywhere. These clothes are all donated to charities which is a great solution.

Now that I'm ready to roll, I start walking to my corral for the Blue Start. Even though I'm upset that I'm in the "slower" Wave 3, at least they gave me Corral A which is the first corral. I take off walking towards the start while chatting with some gals from Pennsylvania who are also Corral A. I get all the way to the corrals only to find out that I'm at the wrong start!!! Oh c r a p! I was at the Orange start and I was supposed to be at Blue! I begin panicking because no one has any idea how to get to the start of Blue. After asking every person with an ING shirt on (the sponsor) and none of them able to help me, I just take off running in the general direction of where I thought the start for blue would be located. Fortunately, I find it with about 3 minutes to go until the gun! I think I probably ran about 3/4 of a mile just to get into my corral! Well at least I got the blood flowing and the heart pumping.

The odd thing about the start of a marathon with 2 million+ spectators is that there is pretty much less than 100 spectators at the start due to the limited access to the start line. After the singing of "God Bless America", the gun went off and we were off! Frank Sinatra singing "New York, New York" begins blaring through the sound system as I cross the start line and we're headed immediately onto the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

This is actually the biggest hill on the course but not one person even realizes they're climbing a hill because of the excitement in the air and because it's only Mile 1! It was quite a rush reaching the highest point of the bridge halfway out on a two mile long bridge and seeing the Manhattan skyline off to your left as well as the Statue of Liberty off in the distance. What an amazing site.

Another really neat thing during Mile 1.....I was just getting started on the bridge and looked ahead of me and saw a huge DRC logo on the back of a forest green tech shirt. You have got to be kidding me. It was Michael Fritz! I could not believe I ran into him! We ran for a while before I left him as I had a pace to keep!

Once we finish the bridge, you enter Brooklyn and the crowds are going crazy! If you watched the race on TV, it didn't do the crowds justice. The professional women's race started at 9:10am which was a full 30 minutes before the professional men and Wave 1. The city was just waking up from Halloween revelry and, as a result, the crowds were extremely light during the 9 o'clock hour. By the time I started at 10:20, things were hopping! Once we hit 4th Avenue in Brooklyn, the crowd support and noise was unbelievable. After reading all the NYC marathon message boards during the weeks leading up to the race, everyone was saying that you absolutely must put your name on your shirt. I did so with some athletic tape in four inch letters so you could see me coming a mile away. I was a running DANNY billboard. People were screaming my name and cheering me on the entire 26.2 miles! I had at least two of the DJ's on the streets call me out by name and had no less than 30 people per mile yelling my name (not an exageration.) I was on cloud nine and just wanted to reel off 7 minute miles I was so pumped up in the electric atmosphere. It was so crazy, I had to move to the middle of the street to try to minimize the crowd noise and so I could focus on my pace.

One thing that stood out while going through Brooklyn was when we entered the Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in Williamsburg. It was really weird how we went from a crazy party like atmosphere to complete silence and a serene environment as the locals looked at us with bewilderment. I was even reluctant to spit on the street during this section of the course as I didn't want to upset the locals. Here's a pic:

I was feeling very good and was keeping great splits through Brooklyn. I was on pace for a 3:45 or better and feeling like I was going to be able to hold onto that time because the weather was excellent: low 50's and overcast. It was a tad humid but nothing like we had trained in. I hit the half marathon point at 1:51:32 so I was feeling really good with the chance of a 3:45 finish. My body was strong and no signs of cramping.

Everyone kept talking about the really tough hill at mile 15 which is the Queensboro Bridge. This is supposedly the most difficult hill on the course. I thought it was a breeze! I was passing people left and right and the only thing that slowed me down was all of those struggling at a slow pace or simply walking. This was really frustrating me and I began cursing to myself about having to start in Wave 3. I failed to mention that I started noticing bibs from Wave 2 as early as mile 5. It could have been earlier but I didn't even think about it until I started running into slower traffic during mile 5. Back to the Queensboro Bridge....it was dead silent on this bridge with very little talking due to the hill and the fact we were 15 miles into the course. This was pretty much the only part of the race we ran in silence. However, what laid ahead was the most amazing running experience of my life and the highlight of the NYC Marathon.

Once you exit the dead silence of the Queensboro Bridge and enter Manhattan, you are greeted with the most raucous crowd of your racing life! It went from silence to a rock concert as the crowds exploded on 1st Avenue once you exited the bridge! The crowds were 10-20 people deep on both sides of the street and everyone was screaming and ringing bells! I could not believe what I was experiencing! This one moment was worth every single mile of training. Here's a short, MUST WATCH video which will give you an idea of what we experienced: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVrDYjRTTdk

After about 4 miles up 1st Avenue with insane crowds, we then head to The Bronx for a quick mile or so and jump back south into Harlem. The crowds in Harlem were awesome! They had a gospel choir singing and they were jamming!

By this time we're at about mile 21 and I'm starting to feel some fatigue. This is the point in OKC where I made a poorly timed port-o-potty break which caused me to severely cramp in both quads. I vowed not to let cramping destroy my race this time so I was taking salt packets and hydrating extremely well during the race.

I must admit that I studied the course quite extensively during the weeks leading up to the race but I had no idea how tough it would be going up Fifth Avenue. From about Mile 22 to 24, it's a gradual incline before you enter Central Park.

For the first time in the race, I was really struggling. This hill wiped me out and I was starting to feel cramping for the first time in the race in my right hamstring. I was doing everything I could to keep pace and not let the hamstring go into a full fledged cramp. I could even feel myself altering my gait to compensate.

Once we entered Central Park, we began a downhill section at mile 24 which was much needed. Much to my chagrin, the transition from hamstrings (for the run up the hill) to quads (for the downhill in Central Park) caused my right hamstring to give out and go into a full cramp. I felt like I had blown a tire and I was extremely upset. I limped to the side of the course and had spectators six inches from me yelling encouragement and that I was "almost there!". I know they meant well but I was pi$$ed! I wanted to strangle them and tell them to shut the #$&%*$ up! I thought my race and my PR were toast.

Fortunately for me, I have been doing a ton of reading on cramping since I am so prone to severe cramping and loss of salt during long runs. I had read that when you cramp during a race you should not stretch it but apply pressure directly to the cramped area for 30+ seconds to see if it lets go. Even though I was cursing out loud like a sailor, I calmly applied firm pressure to the hamstring and it eventually released the cramp!! I was ecstatic but still worried about it. I had lost about two minutes working out the cramp but at least I was still running!

I got back on my pace again with a limp through the rolling hills of Central Park. I hate to say it but I was so concerned about my hamstring and keeping my pace that I really didn't allow myself the luxury of soaking in the experience of the finish in Central Park. Looking back on it and after surfing the internet revisiting the moment, I can say that it's simply an awesome experience.

I was able to keep my pace and I finally hit the finish line at 3:46:28 or 3:46:29 (there's still nothing official stating my time and I've received conflicting reports from the New York Road Runners about my time). As a marathoner, I'm holding out hope of gaining back that extra second when the results are official on November 16th. :-)

One really cool thing I stumbled across after the race was a guy that recorded the entire race from the final turn in Central Park at Columbus Circle and posted it on YouTube! It took some time to figure out where I am but I located myself on the final turn! If you are bored enough and still reading this, you will see me running by at about the 1:55 minute of this video. I'm proud to say that I was still passing people this late in the race and I wasn't getting passed. This will give you an idea of the final half mile in Central Park. I'm in a burnt orange tech shirt in the middle of the course: http://www.youtube.com/user/lagalagny#p/u/30/7qUkgOhxi_U

Yet another random occurence....I ran into the twins at the finish line! The odds of this were astronomical as there were thousands and thousands of finishers walking through the park at the finish line. It was great to see familiar faces although I had to laugh at the odds of running into every single DRC person I knew in a race consisting of 43,000+ runners that had three different starting times. Crazy, huh?

Overall, I must say that I plan on trying to run this race every single year that I'm able. It is simply amazing. I'm sure I'm beating you down by now with all the raving but it really is that cool.

I'm pleased with my time even though I could have done better. However, I'm most proud of the fact that I ran this race for all of those families that have been struck by cancer. I raised over $7,000 for the American Cancer Society and I was extremely honored to run for all those that have suffered through this terrible disease. Hopefully, my little 26.2 mile run and the $7,000+ we raised will help put a dent in this awful disease and help get us closer to a cure.