First Marathon Before My First Marathon

Say what? Yep, the number that I give for how many marathons I've run is always the number of official marathons, the first of which was New York City Marathon in 2003. However, there's actually one unofficial marathon that I ran in 2002.

As part of a leadership/self-development course that I was taking in 2002, I decided that I would run a marathon along the same course as the NYC Marathon (well, mostly the same) to raise money for the American Cancer Society. When I went to ACS' local offices to advise them of my attempt and see if they would assist with advertising (and have people sending the money directly to them -- I preferred not to handle it directly), they looked at me like I was nuts; they didn't help. I went forward with my plan anyway. (Mind you, this was before the internet was so ubiquitous as today.)

Since the Verrazzano Bridge doesn't allow any pedestrians except for the official NYC Marathon, I needed to adjust the course I would follow to make up that extra distance solely within Brooklyn, to meet up with the rest of the standard, official course. I took to the streets of New York City (more aptly, the sidewalks, since I had to deal with regular traffic and traffic lights) three weeks after the actual marathon ended. My support team: my parents and a few local friends met me at pre-set locations (to cheer me on and help me with my nutrition needs -- I had no idea how to be fully self-sufficient during the run; I didn't have that sort of equipment at that time), and one other person in the leadership course (a 17-year kid from Italy who had never run any appreciable distance before) who ran about 25 miles out of the 26.2 right alongside me.

It was cold and it took a long time. (I think it was somewhere around 6 hours.) But I finished. And over the course of the months of training leading up to it, I managed to raise $4,000 for ACS. They were so floored by my effort that weeks later they asked me back to their offices for a brief meeting... where they promptly rewarded me with a plaque.

I qualified for the 2003 and 2004 NYC Marathons via the 9+1 system (before the +1 was part of it, actually) and figured that 2004 would be my last marathon. Clearly that wasn't the case, but those are stories for other days.