How I Managed To Sign Up For The New York Marathon (and get accepted...)

I had no intention on running a marathon this year.  Really...it was not in the plan - you can read it in my blog.

However, there was one - and only one - way that I would even consider training for the full 26.2 this year.  The thought came to me last November when I saw this on the Ellis Island site:

It's the passenger record for my Nana.  She arrived at Ellis Island on November 8, 1909.  This year will mark the 100th anniversary of my Nana arriving in the United States.

Now, most running enthusiasts know what happens each year in New York during the first week of November (here's a little hint, for those of you who don't know).

So...I thought it would be a really cool idea to celebrate this milestone by running the New York City Marathon.  However, it's not easy to get a spot to run in the NYC marathon.  There's a lottery, so there was no certainty I would actually get in.

I started thinking about this a little more.  Another way to guarantee a spot in the NYC marathon is to run for a charity.  The more I thought about this, I decided that the perfect scenario would be for me to run the NYC Marathon while raising money for the Alzheimer's Association.  However, the Alzheimer's Association was not one of the charities for last year's race (I would later learn that they had never been one of the charity partners for the NYC Marathon...).

I continued to check the charities page throughout March and April to see if the Alzheimer's Association would be a participating charity this year.  Finally, the charities were posted - and the Alzheimer's Association was one of the charities.  WOW!

I sent in my application.  Again, I had to think it was a long shot.  They only take 50 runners.  The team is NY based (it's the New York City chapter of the Alzheimer's Association that is sponsoring the team) and I don't live in the NYC area.

Somehow, the stars aligned and I opened up this email on Friday evening, June 19:

So...this all means that on November 1, 2009, I will be running the New York City Marathon in memory of my Nana - exactly 100 years to the week of her arriving in New York, through the city that she called home the majority of her life, and raising money to combat the disease which took her away from us.

WOW!!!

So much for my plans to focus on Half Marathons this year...