Day 52, 53

Workout:
NYC Marathon

Results:
4hr15m

Rae Report:
5:00am Wake up, throw on a couple layers and head out the door.
5:20am Meet a bunch of experienced runners in the subway station and realize that I have no idea what I'm doing.  I listen a lot and learn important things like, don't push it on the bridges and to much GU will give you diarrhea.
6:30am Arrive at the village.  It's 40 degrees and my race doesn't start until 10:10.  I'm not early or anything, basically everyone else is here to.  Of note, one of my Neurology professors, a woman using a breast pump before the race to "lighten her load" who I have a nice conversation with, and a 63 year old Swiss man who is apparently one of the oldest people in the world with Cystic Fibrosis (he had a lung transplant and now he runs marathons).
9:30am I walk over to my corral.  It's exactly like it sounds but instead of huge cattle, it's jam packed with very tiny runners.
9:35am I look for Jarrod the Subway guy.  He's nowhere to be found.
9:45am I notice that seemingly half the crowd is speaks German.  I know, it's odd.  I likely noticed it more because I'm wearing a Swiss Athletics jacket and so basically every Swiss runner introduces themselves to me in Swiss German.  This happens 5 or 6 times.
10:10am The starting gun fires and the race starts!  Unfortunately there are 10,000 people in front of me and I'm a quarter mile from the start line.
10:20am I actually start.
10:25am  I realize that this whole race is really a big party, at least initially.
10:40am  After my first two miles are really slow, as is expected I find a small Italian runner who is going the pace that I'm aiming for.  I think he weighs 130 lbs.  I decided to trail him.
11:30am All is well.
12:00pm  I still feel good, but I am becoming aware that my pace runner is managing to keep up the desired pace only by dodging around all the slower runner.  This takes a lot of energy.  I basically never run in a straight line for more than 400m.
12:20pm  I reach the half marathon point.  Not a terrible split, 1:57ish.  I feel a lot better than at the finish of my last half marathon.
12:21pm I realize that this is the farthest I've ever run before.  Cool.
12:45pm  It's getting a bit more difficult to keep up the Mr. Italian.  I keep losing him and having to speed up in order to catch up.  Still, his pace is what I want, so I keep at it.
1:00pm  Very suddenly, and incredibly absolutely, I hit a wall...crap.  My legs go from functional yet tired, to completely useless in a matter of minutes.  I don't remember all the much from this point on.  All I can remember is that there was no way I was going to stop, so even though my pace slowed significantly, I kept trudging.  This sucks.
2:15pm Finish.  Really, that last .2 miles is unnecessary.

All in all it was a great experience.  I learned a lot, such as not pacing a guy who wasts lots of energy darting between people, and that marathons are really, really long, so start really, really, slow.  It just sucks to not get sub 4, because now that means I need to do another one.