Taeya's NYC Marathon Race Report

by Taeya Konishi Schogel

Since my mind wasn't all set for this marathon to beat my previous time, I was so relaxed, that on race day I was waiting for the train to get to the ferry terminal and realized that I forgot my throwaway clothes.  Luckily there was a deli right there so I bought trash bags. That was good news.  Then I got to the train and realized that I wasn't wearing my Garmin. Oops, I forgot it!  Since I was running with Miguel, I was ok without a watch. After that everything was fine.

I was worried that I couldn't carry 3 gels and 2 salt packets that Miguel gave me. I put some under my gloves, and some in my shorts pocket. I was holding one of the salt packet for easy access, but because I was wearing gloves and thanks to the wind, I lost one of my salt packets before reaching mile 2 :(  Then, I don't know at which mile I took one of the gels, but at that point I was carrying my last salt packet in my hands while taking the gel and water.  Somehow I lost this unopened packet AGAIN!  Then on Lafayette avenue my shoe lace came untied, at this point I was thinking "Great!  What else can go wrong in this race!?" I had to step aside and tie my shoe. Then, I kept going. Since I didn't have a watch and was going by feel, Miguel kept yelling at me that I was going too fast. Thanks to him, I kept the pace we were supposed to run at. The cheers from spectators were awesome! Especially the voluncheers at mile 12! Then I lost him on the Queensboro bridge.

At this point I was worried I was going too fast or too slow. I didn't know my pace that well. Then at mile 23 all of a sudden, I had a super sharp pain in my stomach. I really had to go to the bathroom, but just sucked it up and kept going thinking it's going to pass. It didn't pass, but I just had to reach the finish so I could use a bathroom. I reached the finish and didn't even look at the clock. My mind was focus on finding a bathroom. Sure enough there weren't any.  One of the volunteers told me they were outside of the exit zones ... great! I walked to pick up my stuff and felt like that walk was endless! Finally, I got to my stuff. I stretched for a bit and was trying to look up my time on the phone. It only showed me a prediction time of 3:15 so I was happy as I was shooting for somewhere between 3:10-3:20. As I received texts from friends, I had to text Angela and Linda to ask what my finish time was as I had no idea. They told me the time. It was nice to know that it went better than expected. But seriously what a hot mess I was!

Thanks again for cheering!  It's always so nice to see familiar faces thru out the course!