I went into one of the many huge tents provided for the runners to keep warm and I slept. I woke up and read the newspaper. I slept again. I went to the bathroom so I wouldn't have to go during the race. I tried to sleep again. By then it was 7:30.

Bruce Springsteen music was blaring over the public address system and a man kept interrupting the tunes to make announcements in English, French, and Spanish.

"The weather will be warm, so be sure to drink enough water. Bebe mucho agua. Buvez beaucoup d'eau. There will be a service for Jewish runners at 8:30. If you're not used to having doughnuts before a race, don't eat the ones we've provided because your stomach might not accept them very well. In five minutes there will be an aerobics warm-up session."

At 9:30, I used the "World's Longest Urinal." As I was doing my thing along with 200 other people (mostly men), a bathtub toy floated by in front of me. Someone reached down to grab it but then had second thoughts and retracted his arm.

Finally, at 10:30 a.m., 19,000 peole and I were at the starting line. Having heard that if you're not near the front it takes 10 minutes to cross the starting line, I pushed my way as close to the front as possible. The only problem was that everyone else did the same thing.

It was 10:35 and 10 minutes to the gun. People were getting anxious. Two people in front of me were speaking a language I had never heard before. Some people began to clap their hands. I looked in the air and counted nine helicopters and two blimps. The excitement was building.

At 10:45, Mayor Edward I. Koch boomed a cannon that was loud enough to wake up a family in New Jersey. The race was on, 19,000 people sprinted, jogged, walked, and gallopped over the bridge in search of Central Park. Some said they could feel the bridge bouncing.

Before the Park, we'd have to go through the rest of the city--from Brooklyn to Queens to Manhattan to the Bronx, and back to Manhattan.

2 Down, 24.2 to Go

I was shooting for a time of two hours, fifty minutes (about 6:30 per mile), which would qualify me for the Boston Marathon. At two miles, which I passed in 11:40, a man running next to me said with a foreign accent, "I think this is too fast."

He was right, but by then we were in Brooklyn and thousands of people had lined the streets to cheer us on. I can't slow down here, I thought. Not in front of all these people.

Going through Brooklyn made me glad I wore my Oregon shirt because it was easily readable. "Way to go Oregon!" someone would yell every 100 feet or so, only they'd pronounce it Orygone instead of Oregon.

In Williamsburg, Hasidic Jews lined the steets with their families. I hoped they were praying for me. One woman with a long skirt and a scarf over her head was passing out candy to the runners. "Have some candy for energy," she said.

By the halfway point I was on pace for a 2:42 finish, way ahead of where I wanted to be. I wished the people would stop cheering so I could slow down a bit.

At 15 miles came the ascent over the Queensboro Bridge, taking us out of Queens and into Manhattan. Going uphill and facing a stiff headwind, I slowed my pace.