Running the NYC Marathon worth the pain

My foray into marathon running began over winter break during my sophomore year. A friend, whose free-spirited spontaneity was endlessly surprising and inspiring me, emailed me to tell me that she had registered for the New Jersey Shore Marathon. She encouraged me to register too, telling me that it would be "fun."

Always up for a challenge and eager to stay in shape during the cold Princeton winter, I decided to do it. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

At this point, I didn't even know how many miles constituted a marathon — it's 26.2, for the record. Though I ran track in high school, my running experience was limited to 400- and 800-meter distances, which I considered "middle distance." My training consisted of sprint workouts, or perhaps a threeto five-mile distances run on a tough day. It's funny how my conception of "middle distance" has since changed from 800 meters to 12 miles, and three to five miles is considered an easy training day.

After completing the New Jersey Marathon in April 2004, I had no urge to run another marathon. Sure, the actual marathon experience was fun — minus the whole running for four and a half hours part — but the training proved to be both physically and mentally exhausting. Four months of sacrificing my social life, my sleep and my legs was more than enough.

But, as many marathon runners will tell you, marathon running is addictive — once you run one, you will always have the urge to try again, to see if it's easier the next time around. Much to the surprise of my family and friends, I put my name in the lottery for the New York Marathon. (There are so many people that want to run the NYC Marathon that, in addition to qualifying based on a ridiculously fast time, you can also enter via an online lottery.)

Though I was not all that eager to actually run the marathon, I found myself incredibly excited when I "won" the lottery and gained admittance into the marathon. I use quotation marks when I say "won" because I find it ironic that winning this lottery awarded me with the opportunity to run 26.2 miles — a feat that most people would see as a punishment, not a prize.

And so began my second marathon-training experience. The beginning of my four-month training period was, dare I say, enjoyable. I was working in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the months of June and July, and I loved going on trail runs through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When I traveled to South America for the month of August, marathon training gave me the opportunity to explore new cities in their entirety. I saw six different beach towns as I ran 14 miles along the Pacific coast of Chile, something that I would never have experienced otherwise.

Returning to Princeton in September was a rude awakening in my training, however. Between the humidity and the rain, long runs were miserable — well, more miserable than one would typically expect a three-hour run to be. During the month-long rainstorm, I found myself waking up at 5 a.m. to run 20 miles in the freezing rain along Route 206 because everywhere else was too flooded to run. While the normal response would be to decide that enough is enough and call it quits, the marathon-running mentality is, "This is great practice! Nothing can be as awful as this."

The marathon itself was a memorable experience, perhaps because my body is still so sore that it won't let me forget the torture that I put it through for the past four months. Or, perhaps it is because running through the five boroughs of New York City with more than 36,000 other runners from around the world is one of the more interesting ways you can spend a beautiful Sunday morning in November.

There is nothing more exciting than standing at the starting line, listening to all 36,000 runners singing "New York, New York" while waiting for the race to begin, seeing your closest friends holding signs with your name and cheering for you along the way or hearing random strangers shout out words of encouragement when you wonder how you will possibly make it through the last six miles without collapsing.

Am I going to run another marathon? While I am excited to give my legs a rest and actually sleep in on the weekends for the first time since June, it's very likely that I will decide to do it again, though it would probably be in the very far future.

Marathon running is addictive — it's both mentally and physically challenging, and it is incredibly rewarding to achieve the monumental goal of crossing the finish line with the entire city of New York cheering for you. Still, it's hard to decide if the challenge and the experience are worth the pain.

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As one of my friends so eloquently put it, "May you run over those miles faster than they run over you. . . or whatever it is that you say to someone who is about to voluntarily get a total butt kickin'."