Thanks everybody!

So concludes MAM2k8INGNYCMTB. The final real post is below. I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading this and following my little story. It's been a lot of fun to write, and so I hope it's been fun to read. Expect more obscure references, wild tangents, and non sequiturs via a new forum in the near future.

Stay tuned for my next project. Until then...

Don't Stop Believin'-

-Mark

Epilogue

I sat amongst my friends at The Mad Hatter, the most depressing bar Tim and I could find, and also the dive in closest proximity to his apartment, and marvelled at the attendance level. I say it's depressing in the most positive fashion: we knew it would be empty, as it nearly always is, and as such we knew our friends could come in and take over. I was pleased to discover when I hobbled in that they were, in fact, dominating the place. My parents had found a table up front and were munching on appetizers while my local gang gathered in the back. I stopped briefly to greet the adults, invited them to join us in the back once they'd finished, and waddled onwards to greet my public.

They started clapping. I smiled and bowed my head sheepishly in embarrassment. I'm not very good at accepting congratulations. I need more practice, I guess.

Frisbie offered me a beer from the bucket. Yes please.

Blair and Cassie wanted to meet my parents. Hoo boy. This is how it starts.

Over the next several hours, more people began to filter in and I smiled and chatted with all of them (I hope- I had another pang that evening thinking that somehow I hadn't sufficiently made the rounds and that someone had come to my marathon afterparty that I'd inadvertently ignored. Such a thing, of course, would not have been my fault, but I worry about these things sometimes.) I learned a number of fine statistics and fun facts:

• My dear friend Liz accomplished her goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon with her time of 3:35:14. This made me happy. I knew she would do it, of course, but I'm not sure she shared my confidence. Perhaps her prior experiences explained her anxiousness; as I had discovered, anything can happen over 26 miles.

• Tim clocked in at 3:49:13, good for 9414th place, roughly 20,000 places ahead of me. This result was not totally unexpected- I figured he'd break 4 hours. (I thought I might, too, but we'll get to that in a bit.) I think he's reasonably pleased. That time doesn't qualify him for anything other than a pat on the back, though. We discussed possible follow-ups to this spectacle, focusing on a running-boxing Biathlon (not unlike the Winter Olympic Biathlon involving cross country skiing and riflery) in which we'd run 5 miles and then fight each other for a round before running again. As far as extreme sports go, this might be our best idea yet.

• More people had been following this blog than I'd thought. I can track visitors, but generally speaking I can't tell how interested they are in the articles. For example, through the magic of web statistics, I've discovered that by typing the words "Matuska sex" into Google, the the first page of results includes a link to this blog. I can't help but think that websurfer was looking for something else. Nevertheless, the positive feedback I received was overwhelming, and as I fielded inquiries over beers that day, I started to feel like a writer.

• I realized the bathroom in this place was downstairs. This made me sad. Seriously, this was a major miscalculation on my part. I had a desperate moment, sitting on the toilet, thinking that I may have to spend the rest of my life in the basement of this crappy bar. Somehow, though, as all of us do at one time or another, I found the will to wipe my ass and stand up again.
  

My friends seemed fascinated by the prospect of entertaining my mother and father, as they rarely sat alone at the back room table, as my mother gushed deeply personal secrets of my childhood to the peanut gallery (or so I imagined.) Normally, such a gathering would horrify me, but I was concentrating on trying to drink my beer. Never before have I experienced such difficulty in downing a magic frothwagon like I did in those hours after the 2008 NYC Marathon, as if my body somehow wasn't ready to go back to being Mark Matuska.

I don't want to frighten anyone, but it still isn't.

I'm going to channel Rocky IV for you one last time as I wax philosophical: over the course of those 26 miles, I's seen alot a-changin'. It's become a pinnacle of politicized corporatespeak lately, like "synergy" and "paradigm shifts", as if "change" is a thing in and of itself. The underlying theme that I fear has been lost in it, though, is that we can do better. That doing better means individual efforts on a daily basis, not a single heroic act to save the world from the terrorists or global warming or whatever you're afraid of. One guy's not gonna do it. But it might not be a bad place to start.

Old habits die hard, or so my platitude cheat-sheet says. I'm trying to kill mine. Not just in an effort to do better. But to be better.

"Cause if I can change... And yous can change... EVERYBODY CAN CHANGE!!!!"

And that's why this probably won't be my last marathon. My knee's still a bit annoyed, nearly three months removed, but it won't stay that way (I hope.) I've decided I kind of like running. Maybe those sixteen weeks of training, which I considered at the time to be the toughest four months of my life since freshman college football, ought to be the norm instead of the exception.

There is also the question of goals. A friend of mine suggested to me months before that when I finished this Marathon, that the feeling of accomplishment would fill me like a glowing ball of warm fuzzies. I waited for that feeling at the end, and it didn't come. I was disappointed. But not like I'd been when I ended my football career, or graduated from the fourth grade. It felt more like a lost game, amidst a season of many. If I want to, I can keep playing.

4:55:13 feels like unfinished business. It was the best I could do on November 2nd, 2008. But it's not the best I can do.

As hard as I try to color this picture in negative fields, however, it wasn't all disappointment and cynicism. After speaking with my parents at the afterparty, my friend Cassie came over to me and said, "Matuska, your parents are so proud of you." I chewed on that for awhile, wondering what my mother could have possibly told her. Probably something like "We're so proud of him," I decided. Not so bad, I guess. Not to mention that it seemed a whole lot of other people seemed to be pretty psyched for me, too.

I peeled my broken body out of bed the next day and strolled gingerly over to a local bodega in search of a newspaper. I slapped down a couple bucks on the countertop and carried it back to my apartment, being careful not to damage it. Drained from the four-block walk, I collapsed into my desk chair and started leafing through. As I read the New York Times on Monday evening and found my name in the Marathon finishers section, I found a way to be proud, too.

But, as I've written before: I'm not done yet.

Finish

I stepped over the finish line. I waited.

Some cameramen flashed in front of me. I mugged for them. Still I waited.

A woman's voice urging just-finished Marathoners to keep moving droned in the background. I realized that her instructions were directed, if not precisely at me, then at a group in my general vicinity that included me. I looked around in an effort to extend my middle finger in her direction, but I could not zero her location. My phone beckoned, so I texted the letters "DUN" to Jamie.

With nothing better to do, I stepped onwards.

A number of lines awaited us ahead. Waves, even, like one might imagine waves of riot police, draping and taping aluminu-heatshields and finisher medals ("Everyone's a winner!") instead of Billy-clubs to the nosebone or tasers to the torso. I accepted my SWAG and examined my shiny new mystery metal medal: a brass-cast figure (we'll call him/her Androgyna, the god(dess) of nonspecific gender efficiency) stands on the front, arms raised, presumably running through a finishing tape, "2008" above its head, and "ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON" over its torso and groin, clearly in an effort to conceal the fact that Androgyna has both boobs AND junk. The back of the medal provides two blank plates for the runner to have his/her name engraved and his/her time stamped, as Pheidippides must have done to his messenger-service timecard at the Parthenon before he keeled over in 490 B.C. It probably went something like this:

Pheidippides: Whew! Hey Everybody! We won! The Persians are defeated! (walks over to the timeclock clutching his card)

Messenger service dispatcher: Hi Dippy! That's super! And wow! You did that in 3:05! Nice job.

Pheidippides: Thanks. Can't wait to go home and take a nap. I'm exhausted!

Dispatcher: Hold on a sec there, Chief. You're not off for another hour. I got another run for you.

Pheidippides: (dies)

3:05 is my best guess for that first Marathon. Take into account that our buddy Dippy was most likely not on performance-enhancers, didn't really practice running long distances, and was in such lousy shape that he killed himself running, I figure he couldn't have broken 3 hours. On the other hand, he was running as fast as his body would allow the entire time; we'll say that I didn't exactly do the same. Wondering what that original time was in the marathon could drive one crazy, though- I mean, we could guesstimate Roy Hobbs' stats from his one season in "The Natural" (I'd say a .362 batting average with 45 homers and 97 RBI in 110 games) or Jimmy Chitwood's averages in "Hoosiers" (41.2 ppg, 0.0 assists, 2.1 rebounds), but we don't really know anything about Athenian distance runners in 490 B.C. We simply don't have any data. How fast would I have had to run in order to kill myself doing it? I suppose I don't really know, but my guess is those lazy bastards eating olives and grapes within the Athens city-state limits could have waited another half hour or so so Dippy wouldn't have had to die.

Where was I? Oh right. The medal. An elderly volunteer-lady handed me my medal, smiled, and said "Congratulations." I smiled weakly and tiptoe-limped past as if I were trying to walk with my legs encased in a burlap sack full of knives. As I inspected my medal, of which there are many like, but this one is mine, l started to think about the frontrunners- does the 10th-place guy who thought he had a chance to win this thing in the beginning, for whom this 10th-place finish is a monumental disappointment, take a finisher medal? Does he clutch his heat shield gratefully and mill about with other "we're all winners!" losers? Does he grin broadly in defeat and head to a UPS truck to pick up his pre-race belongings?

I looked back across the line of volunteers. Some of those chicks were hot! How come I got the old lady?

Does he swat the medal away in disgust from the well-meaning elderly volunteer and scream at the sky from his bowels?

I considered this for a moment. I had waited at the finish line for something. Androgyna wasn't it. I was still waiting. I was beginning to fear it wouldn't come.

The reckless-despair-panic attack remained an option for longer than I cared to think about it. The conditions in the post-marathon protoplasm pool made Auschwitz Staten seem like a finely catered brunch. Hundreds, probably thousands of runners stood packed onto a 25-foot-wide road, each having just completed his or her marathon within the prior 45 minutes. All suddenly were obliged to hurry past the finish line and wait, again. We moved at roughly 1 foot per second, or, in terms of Marathons, 1 Marathon per 96 days or so.

After a while of standing amongst others past the finish, many of whom were clearly in greater distress than I, Alex Trebek suggested I try "Famous Death Marches" for $400. At the time, the Trail of Tears came to mind; I began to contemplate exactly what "exposure" meant medically, and how forced marches bred history book epitaphs such as "death from exposure." After the fact, Tim related to me that his mind was on similar subjects, although his historical atrocity of choice turned out to be the Bata'an Death March. To paraphrase,"Until that line to exit the Park, I couldn't imagine falling out of line during a forced military march knowing that doing so meant being shot or stabbed repeatedly with a bayonet. Now, though... Let's just say that for a few minutes there, I might have taken the bullet to the base of the skull."

Well, then.

So I had a lot of fun walking (crawling, piddling) to the UPS truck after the race. No, the specters of shivering, blue-lipped girls huddled on the curb didn't disturb me. Much. I made it to the 28K group (which, in retrospect, was exactly where I should have been- congrats to the organizers for realistic expectations!) and picked up my way-too-large bag from the (sadly) different UPS guys than I had at in Staten. I wanted to chat them up. Ask them how the trip was. Were they having fun too. Et cetera. Oh well.

I called my parents as I made my way to the exit. Slowly. They were in the mid-sixties, I was in the mid-eighties. I suggested the meet me in the M corral, a suggestion I thought was not completely unreasonable, given my last name, and theirs. So I made my way over to CP West and waited. For something.

Eventually, I saw my mother and my father, he waddling as best he could up the sidewalk, his body failing him in the most basic of tasks I've become so accustomed to, walking ten blocks here in the metropolis that best defines these United States. I've made many allusions to why I've made this effort to complete this race, at the age of 29. My father, at the age of 65, as the best example I can extract, is the most visually descriptive reason I can cite. They met me, hugged me, congratulated me. Somehow, physically drained, I didn't feel much different than I had five hours earlier.

I could barely walk. Thinking critically, it seemed most likely that the best way downtown (where I'd planned a small gathering of friends to meet me) would be the subway. Cabs were few and far between. I directed them over to the BC line at 81st and hobbled down the steps, I could have struggled up and down four times before my father made it once.

We waited for the subway. I waited for something else.

Central Park

I've tried to avoid quoting Sly Stallone throughout the course of this blog-narrative, for fairly obvious reasons- his excessively sentimental cheesiness, coupled with his unabashed exultation of the cliche, demands resistance. It's a difficult task, though- the Rocky movies, I think, with the semi-triumphant return to semi-respectability that came with the only semi-cheesy Rocky Balboa in 2006, do a nice job of identifying athletic struggle and the athlete's will to succeed, even if it's all hackneyed and hyperbolized. Sly takes a lot of crap from Hollywood circles these days, I think mostly because he's not pretty enough to fit in to that crowd, having recently mutated into a grotesque caricature of the little guy fighting Apollo Creed in 1976. Maybe his time is past, but when you recap the life and career of the man who created and starred in two signature American film franchises- the Rocky series and the Rambo series (not to mention Stop or My Mom Will Shoot)- I think you start with a guy coming to Hollywood with a script and a dream. That, more than any invented storyline in the Rocky films, is an inspirational script.

Without further ado: The last three-plus miles of my 2008 NYC Marathon, as narrated by the pen of Sylvester Stallone.

Rocky IV

Adrian (speaking to Rocky from the top of the staircase after he scheduled a Christmas Day fight in Moscow against an invincible opponent who had just a few days prior killed his best friend in an exhibition bout without really mentioning the idea to her first): You can't win!

As I passed the Mile 23 marker a bit before we entered the Park, I guesstimated that I had 35 minutes to run the final 3.2 miles in order to come in under my new, five-hour, last-ditch, better make-it-or-else goal. Given that I'd been running 12 minute miles for the prior ten or so (which in itself is mind-numbing, considering I can walk a mile in sixteen minutes at a brisk pace) I began to feel a sense of urgency. If there was anything left in those legs, Mile 23 was the moment I decided I had to try and pull it out.

Dammit, Adrian. I can win. (Figuratively, anyway.) Take your wet blanket someplace else. 'Cause I'm a fighter. That's how I roll.

Rocky I

Mick (As the Rock has just been floored by a barrage of Apollo Creed shots to his terminally-undefended skull and is crawling about on the mat, grasping for the ropes, bleeding out of his face in the 14th Round): Down! Down! Stay Down!

My legs revolted one last time, as I mentioned in my prior entry, just as we entered the park. This one felt like it might be the last one. The burning sensation in my hamstring that had surfaced on Fifth now shifted to my groin muscle (there's a burning-sensation-groin-joke in here, but I'll leave it to the reader) and I again contemplated my race future (or lack thereof). There were no inspirational signs, or people, or landmarks to push me forward. Just the thought that I wasn't done yet.

One more round, Mick. You stop this fight, I'll kill you.

Rocky Balboa

Rocky (after he takes a massive knee-buckling hook from Mason " The Line" Dixon and drops to a knee, running through a 30-second inner monologue as an effort to regain his bearings during the longest ten-count in the history of fictional boxing): Whadidjoo tell de kid... It ain't about how hard you can hit. It's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take... (breathes) and keep... (breathes) moving... (breathes)... forward.

I would walk twice more in the park- at Miles 24 and 25, the fluid stations. But only for a few steps. I was making good time. Better time, anyway.

Rocky I

Mick (as he holds the heavy bag for Rocky, telling him how he's going to eat lightnin' and crap thunda, and become a vewy dangewous poirson): Lay off the pet shop dame! Women weaken the legs!

I saw some friends of mine on the south side of the park, just for a moment, as I ran past. Blair and Cassie and Aileen and probably others shouted in unison "Matuska!" as I smiled and waved back.

I put my head down and started digging for the finish.

Right, Mick. Women weaken the legs.

Rocky IV

Rocky (after getting pummelled mercilessly by the towering Russian Ivan Drago in the first round of their zero-payday Christmas Day 1985 bout to ostensibly determine a victor of the Cold War): I see three of him out there!

Paulie (as the most useless corner man in the history of real or fictional boxing): Hit the one in the middle!

Ah, Paulie. He's my favorite. If I could, I'd reprint every line from every movie attributed to Adrian's surly meat-packing brother-turned trainer. I fear that would be an exercise that would only be entertaining to the writer, unfortunately.

Why do I recite this only moderately-amusing exchange? Well, mostly because I think I went blind briefly during Mile 26. It's my only explanation for not really remembering much. We turned north on Central Park West and I could sense the finish. I was running faster than I had in 13 miles. As in Brooklyn, I was again looking down at myself from above, detached, disembodied. The crowd lining the left side of the road seemed awfully quiet, so I took a cue from some Italian Stallions I saw earlier in the race and shouted "Make some noise!" as I high-fived some people for the first time since First Ave.

Duke (after Rocky has taken 11 rounds of punishment, been knocked down roughly 74 times, and won over the hostile Russian crowd and perhaps some members of the Soviet politburo): All your strength, all your power, all your love. Everything you've got. Right now!

We turned back into the Park off of CPW. I began to see signs in the distance- 300 yards to go.

Paulie (as he inexplicably rubs Duke's bald head as Rocky inexplicably turns the tide of the fight in the 12th Round) : Rocco, knock his head off!

200 yards...

Rocky III

Rocky (as he willingly accepts Clubber Lang's onslaught in their rematch after Rocky predictably lost the first fight while his lifelong trainer Mick died offscreen due to (in my opinion) zero medical attention): You ain't so bad, you ain't so bad, you ain't nothin'. C'mon, champ, hit me in the face! My mom hits harder than you!

100 yards...

Rocky IV

Adrian (as Rocky is about to knock out the Russian, she chooses to shed her prior doomgloom wet-blanket character and expose herself as the frontrunning golddigger she really is): You're gonna do it!

Hey, you're right. Yo Adrian...

I did it.

(Note: I actually DID do it. The time of 5:16:41 in this photograph indicates official race time from the first Staten Island departures. I didn't cross the start line until (apparently) 21 minutes later than the privileged elite at the front of the line. For those keeping score, my race time was 4:55:13, giving me nearly 5 more minutes I could have wasted and still made the NY Times. Next time, I'll try and cut it a little closer.)

Wait... Next time?

Rocky

Apollo: Ain't gonna be no rematch.

Rocky: Don't want one.

Of course, there was a rematch. And five more movies. Tell you what- stop by one more time next week, and I'll lay down some final thoughts for you to chew on. Until then- I hope you had a lovely Christmas, and have a splendid New Year.

Harlem and the Upper East

Harlem is where I live. But it's not mine.

Familiar territory does not mean home. Home, to me, would be jogging down the valley path past the Babooters's house and the old fire-ravaged barn into The Valley, down the massive straightwaway between the Christmas tree farm aisles and to the shore of the mighty Chagrin. I've always considered the Chagrin River to be the most aptly named body of water in all the planet; should I attach a descriptive noun to the city of Cleveland, that noun would be adversity, and the resulting effect upon the populace would be chagrin. An overarching sadness, I think, follows the waters of the Chagrin, which sometimes flows like a real river, and other times barely resembles a creek. Small pools would form along the shoreline, breeding tadpoles, crayfish, and all manner of minnow, a perfect place for a young boy to learn how to kill waterborne creatures by removing them from their habitat.

I once fed some tadpoles I'd gathered to a pet turtle I'd purchased from a local pet store during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle rage; it died, as did the tadpoles, in different fashions. Its name was Botticelli. I didn't name the tadpoles.

At a particular spot accessible from the shoreline ridge was an unusually large rock in the middle of the river, splitting the current. My father speculated that there was a fishing hole behind it, and that the perfect cast would yield excellent results. I believed him. We called this rock Popeye Rock. It, of course, had grown so big and strong because it had eaten its spinach as a child-rock.

I used to fish those waters, never catching anything worth discussing. Chagrin river fishermen claimed trout and bass from other adjacent locales, but most of what I gathered were suckers. I will continue to fish them, as often as I can, despite it all.

Harlem is where I live. But it's not mine. This minor revelation occurred to me as I muscled my way down the Fifth Avenue corridor through the lower hundred streets of the neighborhood commonly referred to as Harlem. The spectators on the Manhattan side of the Third Avenue Bridge gathered on the streetsides, oblivious of the sidewalks and curbs, bottlenecking the runners into a tighly-packed mid-roadway vein that reminded me of the initial stages in Brooklyn in which I'd been running strong and loose amongst runners, not watchers. My phone buzzed at me once from my armband, alerting me to an incoming call, and I realized that it was likely that Liz and Tim and whomever else had probably finished by then while I struggled at Mile 22. I declined to remove the phone from its holster. I was busy.

Roughly ten minutes later, I wasn't so busy. I had been walking, briefly, I hope, struggling with another series of muscle-locks, trying desperately to push forward. My buddy Jamie was calling and this time I decided to answer. I couldn't hear him, but I shouted my coordinates into the phone, trying to alert my friends that yes, I was still running, and yes, I will finish sometime this year. I clicked off the phone, re-holstered it into my armband, and began plodding forward again.

Suddenly, hindsightedly instantaneously, the most interminable memory moment I can recall, we were at the park. Not in the park- just 110th Street, the north end, with the 4:45 crew. Clocks were stationed at every mile marker, alerting us to elapsed time, and I knew that 5 hours was going to be more of a struggle than I'd hoped. Fifth Avenue at this stage is a long gradual upward incline and a thoroughly demoralizing experience. I tried to find a stride and failed- my legs were nearly useless. At Mile 23 I tried stretching again, outside the Met, and felt the familiar(from ten years prior, as a football player) burn of a muscle about to tear as I attempted to loosen the threadbare structures of my wearied frame.

Not now. Goddammit, not now.

There would be no more stretching.

I ran on the left side of Fifth for awhile. A spectator held out a homemade-magic-markered sign that read, "There is BEER at the end!" I acknowledged him. Repeatedly. Actually, I stopped and shook his hand. Yes, sir. Yes, I hope so. Yes.

With that magical motivator, I turned into Central Park along with the rest of my fellow runners and nearly crumpled to the ground as my body mustered one last protest against the final two-and-a-half miles of the race. I paused, but not long- stillness would be death- and began long, exaggerated walk-strides along the designated path.

This was my route. I'd run the park no fewer than twenty-five times over the course of training. I knew we weren't really close yet.

I also knew that close is a relative term. Glass... half full?

Home was not so far away.

The Bronx

I have some advice for Marathon spectators that wish to be helpful by handing our water, towels, candy bars, or whatnot as runners stumble past: forget bananas. Some guy decided to purchase the entire GNP of Costa Rica and hand it out in the Bronx just past the (whatchootalkinbout) Willis Avenue Bridge, and I innocently decided to grab one. Unfortunately, I failed to recall my Cartoon Boobytraps 101 class from second grade as I maintained my line down the edge of the road. A couple of near-disastersteps later amidst a massive pile of trampled banana peels, I found myself at a dead stop on the sidewalk, cursing the concept of such a dangerous high-potassium fruit. That guy couldn't have more effectively tried to sabotage my race had he painted a hole in the street.

At least I had the banana. I started running again, peeling it as I trotted along, thinking that now, free of manufactured road hazards, I might at least enjoy me some sweet tropicality. Presciently, I recalled Sister Carmen's fourth-grade alternate nightmare across the hall from Miss Meehan's happy homeroom and how she'd check student lunchbags before they were discarded to confirm that all food had been eaten. Recess lore held that poor Nicky Snider had been forced to eat a brown, potentially rotting banana absentmindedly packed by his mother, while the rest of the terror-stricken class watched, in the name of starving children in Uzbekistan, or wherever.

Sergeant Carmen was one sadistic bitch.

I looked at my shiny new banana again.

OK.

Worst. Banana. Ever.

I pulled to a corner at some intersection and yakked out the half-chewed vileness, as some kid in my periphery reacted with a preadolecent "Ewwww!" and buried his head in his mother's coat. You have no idea, kid. I can only hope that he learned the lesson that he should never EVER take anything from strangers, especially strangers that seem friendly. The nice ones are the most dangerous.

And leaving that unsavory incident on the sidewalk (and in a garbage can- no one would be slipping on MY banana peel), I found we were nearly headed back into Manhattan. The race only runs through The Bronx for a brief mile or so. The route reminds me of oldsters in a mobile home that are trying to visit all 50 states, and as such get out of the RV long enough to say, "Ok, we've been to North Dakota." Maybe they stop at a diner and have a cup of coffee. Then they find another place that feels more like someplace. Not that I disliked The Bronx- I'd run this route before, and haven't had to dodge a single bullet. I like the bridges- they're frequent and short. Mostly I like the name, though. The use of definite articles in reference to place- The Ohio State University, The Netherlands (The Noplace?), The Fire Swamp, etc- announces that this is THE Bronx, and all other Bronxes out there (if they have the audacity to call themselves Bronx) merely share the same name and are inherently subordinate. The implication, I think, is that you will remember this place when you're gone.

I will remember the Third Avenue Bridge. Crowd noise dropped to a whisper as we climbed the approach, roughly six miles from the finish. Suddenly, we were a mass of a thousand people running through North Dakota, with only the sounds of our feet on the grated metal bridge surface. I looked up through the silence to see Midtown's skyscrapers resolving in the distance, the jagged horizon buried behind a low-rise sea in the foreground. I shouted:

"Why's everyone so quiet!?"

A halfhearted cheer arose from runners adjacent. My foot planted on the downward arc of the bridge curvature on the Manhattan side and noise from the Harlem crowd began to seep into the air. This is not a wall, I thought. This is a gateway.

My strides grew more regular.

I remembered how to smile.

I would be finishing this race.

Manhattan: First Avenue

Tim an I used to imagine on Sunday trips to the gym that we were kick returners, sometimes following blockers, other times avoiding oncoming tacklers as we zigzagged through the gathered crowds on Broadway in downtown Manhattan. We used to joke when one of us got hung up behind an old lady or a mass of tortoising Eurotouristas that our "wedge" blocking broke down. I bring this up because running in the 4ish-hour crowd reminded me of these Sundays, as much for the bobbing and weaving through masses of humanity as the foggy, hungover feeling that was beginning to creep over my body on the Queensboro. Those Sundays, I didn't want to go to the gym, but I did anyway. And I'd officially made up my mind that while I didn't care to run the next ten miles, I would be doing that, too, engaged in the most interminable kick return of all time.

I should also note that I was no longer in the 4-hour crowd. Sprinkled throughout the mass of racers were volunteer pace-setters with signs on their backs indicating an approximation of what their ultimate time may be. In Brooklyn, I'd hung nicely with the 4 hour group; in Queens, I started seeing some 4:15s.

This would become a consistently depressing theme.

According to everyone I'd consulted coming into the race, the turn onto First Avenue is supposed to be a major re-energizer for the runners. I will grant, the bigger crowds, the cheering, and the sense of increased proximity to the finish line was emotionally useful; I found familiarity to be the most encouraging sign, though. I'd run this route before- not specifically down First, but down the East River from Harlem. I could gauge distances. For example, as anyone that rides in a NYC Taxi is reminded on the back of the driver's seat, every four blocks is approximately 1/5th of a mile. Twenty blocks is about a mile. So I could run 18 or 19 blocks and walk one or two and feel like I was getting somewhere. I would be coming to my first "somewhere" reasonably shortly at 90th St., supposedly the St. Vincent's Hospital cheering location, and where I knew I would at least find my parents.

I hoped that, anyway.

Of course, measurements and pacing were theoretical; reality was maddening. My legs would begin to feel better for brief flickers of time and my stride, naturally, would get a bit longer. Seemingly within an instant of regaining an internally acceptable pace, though, near that 18- or 19-block mark (or the 8- or 9-block mark), my calf(ves) or my thigh(s) or my hamstring(s) would spontaneously contract, forcing a halt to progress as I pulled off to the side to attempt to regain control of my bodily functions. I hadn't felt dehydrated the whole race; fluid stations were useful only for purposes of self-image, as other runners walked through these areas too, and so I could refrain from muttering the series of expletives I'd been exhaling since Queens for a hundred yards per mile as I gulped down Gatorade Endurance Formula (TM) and Poland Spring (TM), the official drinks of desperation.

I managed to extract myself from my focus-coma for the few blocks around 90th and slowed considerably at Bar East, the designated Marathon party zone for St. Vinny's. As I slowed and scanned wildly for a recognizable face, the crowd stared back with equally vacant eyes. One of them shouted "Keep going, buddy!" and was forced to catch myself before responding "Eat shit, buddy!" A wave of primordial panic overtook me. That hangover melon in my gut nearly exploded my broken body into a mass of ectoplasmic rage. Some guy cut me off, and I started trying to catch up with the possible intent of pummeling his face into the street until my hands hit pavement.

Oh, Hi Mom!

I saw her on the side of the road, my dad standing next to her, she holding up a "Don't Stop Believin'" sign she'd made at the office. Well then.

They hadn't seen me yet, so I surprised them as I pulled up looking as if I'd been having a jolly good time. I hugged my Mom and answered a few questions- "How're you feeling?" "Great. This is turning into a nature hike, though." "How's the knee?" "Fabulous. I don't think I even have a knee anymore." Blah? "Blah-great-blah." etc. I let them take a photo and took my leave feeling... better. I'd made my first real checkpoint- getting to my parents without looking or sounding like a rabid bloodthirsty lunatic, or worse, like I might not finish. Next was getting to the (whatchootalkinabout) Willis Avenue Bridge and the Bronx, another thirty or so blocks down the road. Not far at all. Things, it seemed, were looking up.

There, with seventeen-plus miles down and nineish to go, I began to think about my tiered pre-race expectations. Initially, I'd thought I could break four hours, but that seemed unrealistic given recent tea leaves and shirt-signs. My secondary goal was to beat the average race time, which in 2007 was somewhere around 4:30; I've always prided myself on being above-average. This still seemed doable, if I could just stop breaking down. I thought this just as a sprinkling of 4:30ers passed me, idle on the sidewalk, chatting up an extraordinarily bored police officer and stretching my calf muscles around 116th St.

Yep. 4:30 or bust.

The ultimate disappointment would come, though, if I would fail to break five hours. The New York Times publishes the name of every runner that finishes with a time under five hours. Everyone else... would need to hurry to get to the afterparty.

The conditions called for a readjustment of priorities and expectations. I'd run the first half of the race well. I simply had to run the second half poorly, it seemed, to make good on five hours. I haven't always said this, but I may start saying it now: If you can't aim high, just try and aim.

Queens

I'd been here before. Not on the Pulaski bridge- I don't really like to run in random parts of Queens. It's a metaphor. You know- the bridge between where I am and where I'm going. I think it's more rare for them to be focused in moments, as they are on TV, or in movies, or on a bridge in New York. More often, I imagine, they're spread out over days, months, years, as we step towards the rest of our lives or wait to die. We choose whether to keep running or to curl up and surrender. These past sixteen weeks have been about pushing forward, for me, after years of sitting idly driven only by my own inertia. As muscle cramps seeped into my calves, and then my quadriceps, and then my hamstrings on and past the gateway to Queens, just past Mile 13, I found time as I stretched and winced to reflect upon occasions in my life that warranted surrender.

As a junior high school baseball player, unable to master the vagaries of the slow roller.

As a senior high school wrestler, beaten for the second time at the district meet by a guy that was just a little bit better. Or a little less afflicted by a bum shoulder. Schreiber, of Cuyahoga Heights. He didn't even go to State.

As a freshman college football player, just a little too slow (who knew 3 tenths of a second could be such an eternity?) and weary of recurring injury.

Other than the at the end of every time I rewatch Major League, these are the last three times I remember crying- when I came to the conclusion, or that conclusion was delivered, that my time to "play" was over. It wasn't necessarily the failure, I don't think- it was the finality of that ending. For those of us who participate in these things, it's not like the end of a lost game or match, a poor grade, or a bad day at the office- for these failures, there is always tomorrow and an opportunity to do better. I liken this feeling more to a little death- of hope, perhaps- of something inside.

I find it very difficult to rationalize these "little deaths."

Another time I cried that I can recall was on the last day of fourth grade. I remember it vividly- sitting at our desks, the clock inching toward 2:30, Sister Jane giving the day's final announcements on the P.A. At my elementary school, Dionne Warwick, Stevie Wonder, Luther Vandross & Whitney Houston singing "That's What Friends Are For" was the customary good-bye song that played over the P.A. In past and coming years, this had been the happiest of moments- as soon as those jerks stopped singing, we were free to go. In fourth grade, leaving Miss Meehan's class, though, a funny thing happened: we didn't want to go. As Stevie started playing that harmonica, the first of us started sniffling. By the time Whitney jumped in, the whole room was bawling- boys, girls, everybody- with a semi-elderly Irish lady looking on with awe and kindness.

I've had many years to contemplate this phenomenon, and there are a few potential explanations, the fact that we LOVED Miss Meehan and we didn't want to leave her class being the audience's populist choice. Hormonal imbalances, childhood immaturity, and mass psychogenic illness round out the likely possibilities. I have an alternate theory, though, and one that is itself rather depressing: Each of us, in our 10-year-old heads, had come to the same realization independently but as a group- that this had been, and would be remembered as, the best year of our lives. Every other year to follow would not measure up.

This, it seems, would be something to mourn. And so we did, without really understanding why. And I feel as if the early part of my twenties has been spent tacitly giving credence to this theory. I've been given much and produce little. I had high aspirations that have not been met with the requisite work ethic to achieve them. Business as usual was leaving me as just another worker bee amongst the hive of Americans that go to work everyday as a timewaster between the end of education and the onset of dementia.

I will turn 30 this year. The choices are clear, and time isn't exactly running out, as far as I know. But it continues to tick.

These were the thoughts I reflected on as I made my way towards the Queensboro Bridge, a bridge I'd once before stutter-run in an abortive training exercise to Roosevelt Island weeks earlier. We would be running on the lower level. Adjacent racers howled under the overpass as we entered, their voices reflecting off the concrete and steel above back to us below, formulating an initial crescendo of voices that dropped into the unsilence of a thousand feet hitting pavement amidst the occasional grunt. I slowed to a walk on the approach- this was not the first time, nor would it be the last, that I dropped my pace, but it was the first time I had done so willingly, without the prompt of a shot of pain from my legs. "What's the point?" I whispered aloud. I came to a halt.

Runners passed on my left as I hauled my right leg onto the divider and tried to stretch out the recurring cramps that had hounded me for the previous three miles. I stared blankly ahead at the curvature of the bridge ceiling. I considered the possibility that should one of these cramps develop into a muscle pull, my race would be over. Maybe that would be a good-

No.

I would be running when I hit Manhattan.

Brooklyn

I am a leaf on the wind... Watch me soar.

For a few moments, there were no roads. No crowds, no Marathon, no fears. I floated high above the fray, looking down, marveling at the streaming convection of bodies making its way through the veins and arteries of this city. I couldn't feel my feet, my legs, my hands, my face...

I am a gazelle, buried amongst the herd, fleeing from a cheetah, willing my way to survival...

And then I was running. Fast. I cut across the crowd of runners to the left side of the road to high-five members of the crowd, marathon junkies, kids, crazies. I threw my fist in the air as a local band did their damnedest to struggle through Led Zeppelin's Black Dog. I breathed easy, kept my cadence quick, realizing that I was well ahead of the pace I'd set out for myself.

I am a camel, built for long travels across barren wastelands, awkward at first glance, but faster than you might imagine, whipped from my life of meandering leisure by a group of crazed Arabs...

Miles 1-5, my knee resisted, trying convince me that this was a bad idea. Why didn't I just hop into the subway and meet everyone at the finish, it whined. I don wanna, I don wanna... In Mile 6, it drew silent. I like to think it came to the conclusion that this wasn't going to end anytime soon and gave up pain for a few steps. Had it any idea this would continue for another twenty miles, I suspect it would have complained longer.

I am a seagull amongst the flock... I run.. I run so far awayayay.... Gotta get away....

The best band in Brooklyn was a Motown-style group outside of a black church at the entrance to Bed-Stuy. A fantastically energetic crowd of people, they danced and clapped and cheered as the mass of churning protoplasm made its way past. Then came the projects. Crickets.

I am a Clydesdale... Muscling Budweiser from one place to a distant other, running through pastures, rivers, nostrils flaring, determined.

I hooked my traincar to Carlos for awhile near Mile 10. Carlos seemed to be a runner of similar ability running for Fred's Team, dressed in relentless violet spandex running gear, with a photograph of a young boy affixed to the back of his shirt with the name "Carlos" written above in black magic. It's unclear to me whether the runner or the boy was Carlos; perhaps we all were Carlos. I decided to be Carlos for awhile, and as fans cheered Carlos on, I pretended they cheered for me as I pressed onward and upward to Queens.

I am the Journey.

Staten

"What am I doing here?"

The thought bounced in my brain a few times before I discarded it as I waited for Tim outside the entrance to the marathon encampment at Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island. The answers could have been short or long. I was waiting for Tim, as he'd asked me to give him a few carbohydrate gel-packs from my stash before the race. No problem buddy- just show up where you're expected. On a larger scale, I was "preparing" to run 26.2 miles through the five boroughs of New York. "Preparing"by standing around for three hours in 35-degree cold. "Preparing" by munching on Power Bars, bagels, drinking water, coffee, visiting the Port-o-Johns 3, 4, 5 times... "Preparing" by pacing, back and forth, driving myself out of my skull. I swear, between the walk to the subway, then the buses, then off the buses, then through the camp to the other entry, then along the 5 foot patch where I was waiting for Tim, I walked three or four miles leading up to this damned race.

Seriously, though- What am I doing here? Can I do this? On a bum knee? Do I want to do this? Let's weigh the pros and cons:

Pro: $2,800+ raised for a hospital so some poor uninsured sap can get his face reattached after a bar fight Sunday night.

Con: Big whoop. Maybe the penalty for chickening out is doctor-prescribed eye-gouging with a blunt spoon. It's not like I read that legal agreement or anything. And it's not like they know who I am, or where I live.

Pro: Sixteen weeks of training. Time and effort invested.

Con: It's my personal opinion that too many decisions are made based upon sunk costs. If that training has any value, it sure doesn't feel like it.

Pro: Sixteen weeks of talking (and writing) up my experience to all of my family and friends, many of whom also have sunk some cost into this little event. Let's rephrase: Invested in Mark Matuska Futures.

Con: People like me. I'll make new friends.

Pro: No you won't. You're lazy and irritable.

Sigh.

I waited until 8am. No Tim. Sorry buddy. You're out of luck.

Back in the camp, lugging my transparent check-bag along with me (which seemed to enclose about four times as much stuff as anyone else's- guess they pack light), I couldn't take any more. I decided to call my friend Liz, in from Chicago to run her 9th (!) marathon. What about this experience that would make me want to run it nine times, I couldn't tell. I was cold, tired and more than a little lonely. The relief I felt to find her in the coffee line offered a brief respite from my frigid inner monologue. I realized that the words I spoke to her on the phone were the first words I'd uttered since speaking with Tim at 5am. It's good to talk.

We sat for awhile under a tree chatting. Liz and Tim would both be running in Wave 1, and I in Wave 2. The Marathon this year had three starting groups, separated by 20 minutes each in start times, in an experiment to investigate "growing" the race. 39,000 strong apparently isn't enough.

Soon she would be called to her corral. I would have to wait. "You're gonna have a great run, Matusk." she said, smiling. I hoped so. I wished her well in turn, and off she went.

I returned to the staging area, where a rock band was packing up its things after the earliest show they're ever likely to play. I began going through my bag in anticipation of handing it off to the UPS guy that I would meet again after the finish. I changed to my running shoes. I sifted through for my carbo-goo. I pulled out my race number. I shuffled through my pockets for the safety pins to affix it to my shirt.

Panic.

I'd put the pins in my pocket for "safekeeping." I failed to foresee that the pins most certainly were likely to fall through the holes in my mesh shorts. I looked in my check-bag for extras.

One pin. Great.

I dumped my bag at the UPS truck and made my way down to a group of volunteers gathered under a tent and explained my situation. Each looked at the other, until finally the last guy in the circle, either the supervisor or the biggest asshole, or both, replied, "You're screwed."

Thanks, buddy. You've been a big help. How about this idea: I rip off your arms and tie the number to my shirt with your elbow ligaments? Or, alternately, I simply affix the number to my bare chest with your dried blood?

I decided there were more diplomatic options available.

I began asking around to my fellow racers. Happily, my first inquiry, to a group of three that had come with a tent, was met with pleasant smiles and three Marathon-grade safety pins. Whatever your names are, folks, may you receive seventy virgins in the afterlife to do with what you will.

My group was being called to its corral. Go time. I hurried over to the barricades to wait, one last time (or so I thought.) The gun sounded after a few minutes buried in the crowd, and shortly thereafter we began to move. After another shorter while, we passed the entry to Fort Wadsworth, which in future correspondence I may refer to as Auschwitz Staten. As we were definitely, nearly, potentially on the bridge approach, I discarded my trusty Merrill Lynch sweatshirt, which I obtained sometime in college and had kept for no reason whatsoever until this day, on which it served its ultimate purpose amongst the rest of the detritus disposed on the side of the road. The crowd grew more dispersed. The road widened. A few people chose these last moments before crossing the start to take one last urine break over the guardrail or between the buses lined up on our right. I pressed on. The high-pitched tone of the shoe-chip scanners, which I would come to know well over the course of that morning and afternoon, sounded as I crossed the starting line. I was on my way, jogging briskly.

On a normal day, one cannot walk across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge; it's closed to pedestrian traffic. In 1993, 65% of the population of Staten Island voted to secede from New York. I suppose these are but two of the reasons why runners of the New York City Marathon spend roughly twenty steps in Staten Island proper before hitting the bridge to Brooklyn. I know I was pleased to leave it behind. No runners paused to look back upon the start; rather, eyes and cameraphones were fixed across New York Bay to the Manhattan skyline.

"That doesn't look so far," I joked to myself.

I stepped up on the berm on the side of the bridge to pass the lollygaggers. I had stuff to do.

PreGame

The alarm blared. I pried open my eyes. No snooze today.

There were but a few loose ends to be tied. I contemplated the idea of moving out without a shower, but decided to run clean. Best not to tempt fate with a bloody bung, cleanse the crap from the night before. The phone rang, like it should, or would, at 4:54am, trusty Tim, making sure I was awake. I would not hear, from my semi-prone perch in the wildly fluctuating temperatures of my mid-19th century Harlem studio's shower. He'd call again, and I'd answer, all is well, I'm not going back to sleep, no sirree, not this day. I am awake, not ready, but getting there.

It's product placement time: placement on my feet underneath my high-tech socks, placement under my arms beneath my high-tech shirt. Will I use the nipple-guards my cousin was so thoughtful to provide? Nah. Jelly for my tits, jelly for my groin, slather me in goo and add some peanut butter, throw me between some breadsheets and call it a day. I paused for a moment in front of the mirror, naked, slimmer than I've seen my profile in 9 years, bigger but smaller, healthier but more imperiled. "These are the times that... er, try men's souls" said the Sports-Bot, in my hallucinatory ear. Men? I'm still a child.

First: underwear. I wandered to my bureau, or what passes as a bureau, a cheap agglomeration of leftover wood-parts that opens and closes my foldable wardrobe. I'd purchased a number of items for this occasion, ones I was not sure I'd use, or need, or want, but the day of is different than the days before. I must have wanted to be ready. As I stared down into the dresser-drawer, my choices were clear: the Guinness boxer-briefs, the Miller Lites, or the AC/DCs. "For Those About to Rock" remarked the AC/DC briefs, Civil War-era cannons decorating the landscape of the fabric, imploring me that yes, you, Mark, you Are About to Rock, and yes, at the end, We Will Salute You. I pulled them out of the drawer and slid them on, breathing a sigh of relief. The most important decision of the day was past.

The remainder of the decisions had been made the night before. Knee brace- Check. Silk running tights- Check. Asics NYC Marathon Commemorative Running Superterrific Wow Wow Socks- Check. Bright Green Yes I'm A Runner and You Will See me When I'm Running Whether You Like it Or Not Long-Sleeved QuikDri Shirt- Check. Adidas All Day I Dream About Sleeping Hat- Check. Brooks Addiction 7 Running Shoes, Designed specifically for the 200+ pound runner, w/ ChampionChip Government Mind-Control and Race Tracking/Scoring Device Attached- Check. Misnomered Champion overshorts- Check. MP3 Player/ Cell Phone/ Distress Call Armband w/ SOS Beacon- Check. Bag packed with afterclothes- Check. 10 packets carbo-goo- Check.

Running Number 28557, also perhaps my finishing place- Check.

Sense of an impending event, neither inherently positive nor negative, but one that may or may not affect everything else from here on in, depending on the outcome- Check.

I ambled out my door and down the steps of my apartment building, noticing with dismay that the telltale tightness in my knee that had haunted me the final three weeks of my training remained. "No matter to me," I thought. "We're already too deep to worry." I continued on across Central Harlem, the blackly empty streets (save the streetlight mercury-halide orangeglow) eerily silent as I made my way the five crosstown blocks to the 116th Street Barrio 6 Train. As the train pulled into the station, I noticed others carrying the same telltale clear plastic check-bag that I held, identifying them as fellow crusaders. I couldn't muster a word. I sat down in the fluorescently pungent glare of the subway car and thought empty, alone thoughts to Grand Central.

I followed the knowledgeable crowd out of the station and down the predawn vacancy of 42nd Street to the library. Barricades were set along Herald Square, forcing those coming from the east to walk nearly to Sixth Avenue before turning 180 degrees back to Fifth where the buses were parked, a sort of amusement-park ride line to a gas chamber, the same anticipation with none of the payoff. I found a bus, I found a seat, and I begged, pleaded, ached for someone, anyone to sit next to me, say something to me, club me over the head with a tire-iron, anything to remind me that yes, I am at home with the me that is on this adventure. No talkative Samaritan was there to quell my neuroses. I sat in catatonic silence as the bus departed Manhattan, traversed Brooklyn, and chugged over the Verrazano Narrows to Staten Island, where the story would finally begin.