That sweaty kind of love

How do you measure a year? Well at the 2008 NYC marathon, Marathon Man and I celebrated out one year anniversary. Yep, we met at the 2007 NYC marathon which was a very cold morning. He suffered in the cold (without gloves and a hat) for hours before asking me out. I gave him a chance even though he was wearing flip-flop sandals WITH SOCKS! Lame!!!

Earlier in the summer, he, I and another teacher friend (Dave) all signed up for the Marathon Lottery. Basically since there are so many people who want to run it, they enlisted a lotto system that randomly selects 30 or so thousand people out of the nearly 70,000 who sign up. Unfortunately (or thank my lucky stars) only Dave was selected. M-Man and Dave ran together on some of the grueling long training runs (what you may ask was I doing while they were running….I was researching Panera Bread locations). They decided that M-Man would run the last 10 miles of the marathon with Dave, essentially the Manhattan and Bronx leg of the race. M-Man was pure genius and color copied Dave’s bib and then rearranged some of the numbers so that he would look legitimate running in the race. We got to 1st Ave about 30minutes before Dave was scheduled to pass through (mile 16ish). Well the crowd was six deep and there were cops everywhere! The route was lined with 4ft tall metal interlocking barricades. We started to panic until we noticed that behind the water station, there was no crowd or security. I ordered M-Man to strip (he was wearing his running attire and racing bib underneath) and hop over the barricade. The water station volunteers were busy concentrating on the runners, so they didn’t seem to notice (or care) when he climbed in behind them. There were some spectators nearby that at first looked shocked to see some guy tear off his pants and jump into the race. I joked with them and said “oh he missed his bus this morning because of day light savings” and you know what, they bought it! Score one for me.

I headed over to mile marker 23 on 5th Ave. (which coincidently is the exact spot we met the previous year…..sigh). I can’t help trying to make the runners smile and forget about the horrendous amount of pain they are in, so I made a giant sign that said “the end is near….and so is the finish line”. Hey, I’m the girl who shouted at wheelchair participants “don’t just sit there, go go go!”. Yes, I’m going to burn in hell. I cheered for M-Man and Dave when they ran by (5-10 minutes ahead of pace). M-Man ran over and gave me a kiss, but because he was all sweaty and in motion, it felt like someone wiped a wet towel across my face. Blaaahhh, so much for a romantic anniversary.