#TCSNYCmarathon – My God, My Music, My Life

The wife and I flew to New York City Friday for her to run the New York City Marathon 11/3/19. As some of you may recall, she ran this race four years ago and was highly disappointed in her time because she hurt her hip half way into it. At mile 16 when I saw her, she was limping and was in pain but she still finished.

This was her revenge race and she did awesome, but was hurt again. Here is a video and pic of her at mile 16.2 this year, smiling and waving. Much different than four years ago. This is called Thunder Alley because the runners come off Queensborough Bridge where it is frighteningly quiet and then hit the crowd of noise.

Her goal was to be under 3 hours and 30 minutes. She just set a personal record at Boston earlier this year at 3:32:28. She was on pace to be under 3:30 until mile 21 when her upper thigh/groin started to hurt.

She had to stop and walk/run the last four and a half miles but still finished at 3:34:31. She did a great job and was not disappointed even though she wishes her leg would not have started hurting so she could have pr’d. Look at her finish results, she was 3329 place out of 28465 USA runners and 7173 out of 53508 overall runners. Top 14% of all runners. Can you believe there were 25043 runners from other countries? That is crazy.

We had a great time being alone together for more than a dinner date for the first time in forever. It was nice to have some one on one time. Very proud of her.

Saturday she did not want to site see so I took the subway to see Yankee Stadium and do a little site seeing on my own. I wanted to see places we did not see four years ago.

Here are the pics of the leading push rim and women and men runners.

Here are some more pics. Enjoy.

My wife, Kim, ran the TCS New York City Marathon on November 1st. She wanted to do 3:30 and was on pace for it for 14 miles then…

I call Kim the 7:30 per mile runner. She runs on a treadmill so much that she almost always is in that area. It doesn’t matter if she runs a 5k, 10k or 13.1 miles (half marathon). Her pace per mile is always within 2-3 seconds of 7:30. I pushed her, as well as a couple friend runners, to get out of that zone and she did. During training she actually ran a 5k race under 7:00 per mile and she did a couple long runs where she was in the low 7:10 range. Even on her longer run of 17-18 miles she was doing 7:40-7:45 miles. A couple training runs her left leg would give out on her for a second but we didn’t think much of it.

For the first time ever she actually scaled back before a race. She only ran 9 miles the week of the race, and usually she would do 20-25. She did everything right for this race. She was going to hit her goal of 3:30.

Then mile 14 her leg started to give out. By the time she reached where we were at mile 16 she looked at me and said pain and pointed to her left leg. Then at mile 19 she actually stopped and texted me PAIN!!!! Maybe she should’ve stopped but I know her and if you are a runner you know you won’t stop unless you are dead. She had to walk several times and actually had some miles that were 12-13:00 minutes. She did finish in 4:17, by far her worst marathon but it was still an experience.

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My wife took it hard. If you know her you know she was mad, sad, disappointed, and heart-broken. She felt physically, mentally and spiritually broken…for a minute. Then she said she won’t let this define her or who she is. This is just one race.

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Which brings me to today’s topic. We all have disappointments. Times when someone or something lets you down. Times when we think God has let us down. Times when our whole being is tested. Times when we think our whole world is falling apart.

How you respond is how you will live your life. You can get right back up or you can wallow in your defeat. You can get mad at everyone around you or you can welcome them into your home so they can encourage you and help pick you up. You can turn away from God or you can get closer to God.

How will you let your disappointments, setback and failures define you? Do you forgive those that disappoint you? Do you forgive yourself for your own disappointments, mistakes, setbacks?

Do you let it define who you are in God? God only sees you as His child. He loves you and wants you to succeed. Like any parent though, sometimes He lets you do it on your own so that your character will grow.

Stay tuned to tomorrow for Kim’s perspective.