I’ve struggled to write this race report for several days now … because it’s proving impossible to gather thoughts and words and sense around this one incredible day. But I’ll do my best. Please bear with me, this is likely to be long and self-indulgent.

It’s also hard to know where to begin. At the start line? When I got on the plane? To the day I went for my first run or the day when I signed up to my first coaching program? I’ll skip the waffle though, because I think you’ve heard most of it before. But I will say that New York has always been a mythical place for me, home of Broadway and history and beauty and community and bravery and creativity. And in the last ten years or so, I’ve had a growing fascination with the New York Marathon because it seemed like a run that was both far enough away geographically, hard enough physically and celebrated enough globally to present the right level of challenge for a big scary goal. 

Then I watched a movie called ‘I’m Not a Runner’ and another called ‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’ and I watched my girl crush Anna from the Running Channel take on the challenge in 2019 and all the threads wove together and eventually I was able to articulate to myself and to the world that ‘I want to do that too.’

Long story short, there were quite a few other runners in the Slow Coach community who wanted the same thing, and together the ten of us scraped our pennies, heaved our way through our training programs, and cheered each other on enough to finally congregate in a New York hotel foyer and clink glasses and blink in disbelief at what was happening. 

The build up to the race was a happy blur. The tour organisers welcomed us with dinner, hired a bus to drive us the full length of the marathon course and take us to the expo. Local tour guides pointed out the storied histories of every street and statue and bridge and showed us through Central Park and ran alongside us as we shook out our plane legs and settled our nerves. 

But inevitably, and despite my fervent prayers for time to slow down, race day arrived. Thanks to daylight saving the hotel got the wake-up time call wrong and woke us an hour earlier than needed at around 3am, but we were too scared to sleep anyway. Once again we were ferried in a private charter bus to Staten Island. One of the many perks of the tour was being taken to a hotel for breakfast, so we could wait in heated comfort while the other runners shivered through the five or six hour wait time for the race to start.

And when it was time for our wave, we got back on the bus, cruised the streets of Staten Island and were delivered to the start village. To our Aussie eyes, the security was both impressive and scary, with police and snipers and dogs and helicopters watching over us as we went through several checkpoints before sprawling in the New York autumn sun on the village grass. It took an hour or so for them to call our wave numbers (it’s a long process, it took longer between waking up and starting the race than it did to actually run it! Thanks to the number of bridges and roads that need to be closed and the number of runners ahead of us) But then it was our turn. We shed the spare clothes we had brought with us and lined up to hear the National Anthem, which was really moving, and then the canons fired and we were off!

I started running with four Slowlies, which was really special, but we didn’t stay together for long. The crowd has its own magnetic pull, and the gawping yaw of the Verrazano Narrows pulled me up and over, weeping and laughing and dancing and feeling like I might explode. After gazing longingly at aerial views of this race for years, and knowing almost every inch of it from YouTube, it was surreal and magical and physically breathtaking to be out in the November sunshine and making my way along the road with 53000 others.

The bridge was long enough and quiet enough (no crowds yet) to give me time to gather my breathing and settle my heart rate, before we flowed down the other side and out into the deafening roar of Brooklyn. I mean, I’d heard about the crowds. I’d seen them on countless videos. We had been warned. But nothing prepared me for the visceral force of the noise as people lining the streets yelled and banged tambourines and rattled cardboard signs and popped confetti canons as we rounded that first corner. A sign read ‘welcome to Brooklyn’ and once again my eyes mysteriously began to leak.

The first part of the race is indescribably … straight. Literally, the road doesn’t turn a corner for about 17km. So you just run from block to block, looking at the buildings and being entertained by the crowds and the signs and the music and the day. While the elevation varies slightly, the road doesn’t veer off course and at times you can see ahead of you for miles, with a thick, gleeful, colourful sausage of runners held in place by the noisy sandwich of the crowd.

So it’s almost-not-quite half way through the race before you turn another corner! The one vaguely peaceful neighbourhood of Williamsburg was both quiet-ish and fascinating as the devout Jewish community went about their business (Sunday is  working day, and the children were coming and going from school, but many still stopped to smile and clap) And then there was another bridge and another neighbourhood and another avenue and another world and the city continued to unfurl its magical tapestry under my feet.

Then up ahead on the Queensboro bridge I spotted a familiar t-shirt, and I caught up with my best friend Sally for a chat, a hug and a photo op. We exchanged pain killers, and lost our breath laughing about how we were now officially dealing drugs in Brooklyn. But soon enough the bridge gave way to the streets of Queens and once again my ears nearly imploded from the noise as the crowds turned to greet us.

Nature called, so I stopped for a loo break and lost sight of Sally. But I was able to resume my solemn duties of high-fiving every ‘tap for a power up’ sign and thumbs upping every stranger who called my name and dance in front of every band I passed. Normally marathons are painful and demanding, but not this one. I don’t feel like I ran a single second of this event, I simply floated. It was a 26-mile block party and I was determined to revel in every single precious step.

At the 30km mark I saw a giant sign that read ‘Go Sydney Slowlies’ and once again my eyes welled up. Sally’s brother Andrew lives in New York, and he had set up camp outside his apartment building on First Avenue with a camera, a camp chair and a huge esky of treats. So I stopped for a snack break (omg how good are salted roast potatoes?!!!) and I inhaled a vegemite sandwich on white bread. I probably spent about 10 minutes standing there, cheering for the runners and waiting for Sally, who I knew must be on her way, and when she arrived we ate more sandwiches and spent more time chatting and waving and giggling and posing for photos. So I reckon it was a good 20-25 minutes of stationary idleness which in a marathon is just insane but then again, this was no ordinary race.

But eventually we took our leave and trotted on uptown, before rounding through the very tip of Manhattan and up into the Bronx, and then back down through Harlem and into Central Park. By now the day’s shadows were getting very long but the crowd did not relent. We were cheered on by church choirs, and drumming groups, and guitar solos and firemen and police. We surfed waves of cheers from the drinkers at the afternoon pubs and soared through the bubbles and confetti canons and falling autumn leaves. The sunset gave way to gloaming, and the orange sky faded to grey and then black, and despite my best efforts to stay out on the roads forever, inevtably the finish line arrived. I punched the sky as I crossed the finish line, snapped a selfie and then collapsed in a wave of emotion. I wept to the point of keening, so fulfilled and overcome and exhausted and proud. Of the run, of the work, of the clients, of the idea and of the journey.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Pace is a very poor judge of a race’s success. This was, I think, the slowest of my six marathons. It was also by far far far the best. I had more fun, felt more emotions, heard more stories, patted more dogs, danced more silly jigs and gaped at more skylines than I could have imagined. I got the race of my dreams and then some - not just because I ran it, but because my clients ran and finished it, because my idea paid for it, and because New York turned out to cheer for it. I felt validated, affirmed, encouraged, supported and loved. 

When I started Slow Coach I copped a fair bit from the doubters, some real but most imaginary, who told me that this was a stupid idea with no merit. But that stupid idea paid for this trip, and brought clients with me, and coached nine of them to their first ever marathons too. That stupid idea, it turned out, had another name, and I’ll go ahead and call it bravery. I’m so glad I listened. I’m so grateful to the fates for letting it all come to pass. I acknowledge the many privileges that eased my path in so many ways. I am overflowing. I am elated. I am exhausted. And I am undone.

New York you were magnificent. Adventure Time Travel you were excellent. Slowlies you were incandescent. Hyperbole is my superpower, clearly, but in this case its actually insufficient to tell you how life changing this process has been. And all because one day I got tired of the weight of my anxiety and the muddiness of my own bullshit and I decided to go for a run.