I ran the New York City Marathon. It was amazing.

It really was.

It was also difficult. Though I am deeply grateful to have had this experience, I will never run a marathon again. (… though I can now understand why people do.)

It took me about 4 hours and 34 minutes to complete the marathon. I do not have the talent to condense an experience that took that amount of time down into a pithy, bite-sized chunk.

So I shall write in sections instead.

And I shall initially focus on what made the marathon difficult for me because that will offer a stark contrast as to why it was also so amazing.

I ran the first ten miles or so with a friend. He had sustained shin splints that prevented him from any further training in the two weeks prior to the marathon. He runs faster than I do, though we agreed to start together due to his recovering injuries.

We gratefully accepted the love that Brooklyn extended to us—that section of the race was arguably the most fun. We runners still had energy, the crowd was up close and enthusiastic, a variety of musicians cranked out music, and we were just getting warmed up.

My friend and I separated sometime before mile 11. We had already made the agreement that if the other person was going too slow, the faster person should just go ahead. We both knew that this might be the last marathon we ever run and did not want to infringe upon the experience.

I wanted to conserve my energy; he still had kick in his system. An irritable runner was behaving frankly inappropriately (another story for another time) and this was the catalyst that separated us. My friend, I later learned, wanted to get away from this man as fast as possible. I was going to pull back and let the man get away from me.

So, from that point forward, I was running alone… with 43,000 other people.

I was feeling pretty good up through the half-marathon point, when the crowds of Brooklyn disappeared and we crossed into Queens. My half-marathon time wasn’t bad—it was about the same as the other half-marathons I have raced. However, I still had a half-marathon left!

My wheels started to fall off on the Queensboro Bridge, which connects Queens to Manhattan. I didn’t expect this.

The Queensboro Bridge rises above the East River. One doesn’t think of bridges as hills. This bridge has a fairly high mid-point, particularly if you are on foot. This means that the Queensboro Bridge is essentially a steep hill.

I pushed ahead, while others began to walk as we ascended the hill. In fact, a fair amount of people began to walk at this point. A lot of wheels were starting to spin off.

Where was the top of this hill? I began to recite my hill mantra to myself: What comes up, must come down… what comes up, must come down…

… and I wondered when I would stop reciting this.

The support that was lavishly bestowed upon us earlier—the crowds, the music, the excitement of people watching people run (God bless them)—was gone. There were no spectators on the bridge. It was just us and this steel monstrosity.

Eventually, I did begin to run downhill. When I reached the base of the bridge prior to entering Manhattan, I saw about a dozen men facing one of the bridge supports. They were urinating for all to see.

The crowds on First Avenue were thick, but they were far away. Police had erected barricades along the road to keep the crowd back. To my surprise, this restraint made a difference: My experience on First Avenue really did feel restrained. The crowds were also not cheering with the same enthusiasm as in the other boroughs. They had already been waiting for a long time and the superfast people had passed through long ago. I could understand that they were getting bored.

Somewhere on First Avenue, before 86th Street, is when The Sick Sensation appeared.