New York City Marathon Race Report

Thank you to everyone who sponsored, supported and tracked me on my New York City marathon run.

I had the most incredible day, from an early start in deepest Brooklyn, catching the bus, subway, ferry and bus to Staten Island, running over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the start, with Lower Manhattan to our left in the morning sunlight; seeing my family three times at miles 9, 18 and 23, and my friends Philip and Jashiki and their home-made posters outside their apartment building on Fifth Ave (although sadly missing my friends Amy and Matt and Andy with their equally super posters because, D'Oh!, I was looking on the wrong side of the road); running past community choirs, steel bands and massive sound systems as we ran through Brooklyn, up into Queens, over the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan, where, after the noise and excitement of Long Island City, an eerie quiet descends and all you can hear is the sound of other runners’ shoes striking the ground, and breathing. We ran up First Ave through Manhattan all the way to the Bronx, across into Harlem, and back down Fifth Avenue past the museums to a glorious finish in Central Park. In fact it didn’t feel that glorious as the actual finish was UPHILL, which seemed rather uncalled for, but I could still just about appreciate the sumptuousness of the autumn leaves.

London has good crowd support but New York is something else. I had my name on my vest, and all the way along the route people shouted out to me: ‘Rebecca, you look AWESOME!’; ‘Rebecca, you got this!’ and ‘Good Job, Rebecca!’.  I was all high fiving little kids, and even after I’d finished and was hobbling along Columbus Ave to meet my family, people were coming up to me to say ‘Congratulations!’ and ‘Great Job!’. In those hours of warmth and community it was impossible to imagine that only a few days later an orange nightmare would engulf this great nation.

Thanks to your support I’ve raised over £2500 to help Médecins sans Frontières in their essential and incredibly brave work providing medical care to people around the world affected by conflict and disasters.  My fundraising page is open until the end of the year, so if you’d like to support me please do – my page is here.