Watching Athletes X 2

Sunday was Marathon Day in New York. I, of course, ran it last year (for the second time) and the fact that at this time last year I was in substantially better physical condition than I am now has not eluded me lately. When I've huffed and puffed through four mile runs in the past month, I've gently reminded myself that on the weekend before the marathon last year I *coasted* through a ten-mile "easy" run. Sigh.

In the spirit of pre-race carbo-loading, we went out for bagels early in the morning and by the time we returned home, Fourth Avenue was closed off. Just walking across the wide open boulevard of Fourth Avenue shot me right back to last year. I was immediately jealous of all 39,000 runners who were, at that time, still huddling in Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island.

Cathleen and Max took a bunch of baked goods over to a bake sale to raise funds for our Community Garden, and Eliza and I made it back out to the street by a little after 9:30, just in time to see the wheeled athletes coming by (the marathon runs right by the end of our block, just short of the eight-mile marker). If you can watch these folks in various forms of wheelchairs working it and not be incredibly moved, you just do not understand the human condition.

By a little after 10 we joined up with Sophie, Miriam and Rachel to wait for the elite runners. First came the elite women (Paula Radcliffe, 8 months post-partum!), and a half hour later a pack of elite male runners. If you watched the TV broadcast and froze the still frame of the elite men as they passed our block, and if you knew what clothing we were wearing and roughly how our bodies were positioned, you could see blurry little images of people that were definitely us. We were on TV! Gradually, pockets of fast runners gave way to thicker pockets of fast, but not as fast, runners, which gave way to hordes of average joes taking on a big challenge.

At eight miles, the runners are feeling really good. They've only been encountering a long stretch of thick, supportive and loud crowds for about a mile or two and so there is a newness and an excitement for them, and their bodies aren't even close to experiencing the pain that will be leveled upon them by the time they hit Mile 20. I tried to cheer for as many people individually as I could, based on names or other information written on their shirts. Each "Go Rick" cheer that I received when I ran the race lifted me greatly, and so I knew the mitzvah I doing. I did not anticipate the visceral reaction I would have watching the race -- I was completely in touch with the exhiliration that I had felt running it, and was almost completely overcome at moments. When it was time for Max and me to leave, I didn't want to go. But we had Jets tickets, ya know?

A coworker offered me the tickets for free late in the day on Thursday, and after confirming the weather forecast (sunny, high 50s), I jumped at the opportunity to go to a game with Max. He does not bother himself with the nuanced differences between football and baseball, but he has said to me for some time that he'd like to go to a Jets game with me. So we grabbed a few layers of clothing and headed for the subway to Port Authority. There, we boarded a bus for the Meadowlands. Max was very, very excited to be riding on a big bus. He had never done so before (beyond an MTA bus), and th experience was, apparently, significant. When we emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel, he asked if we were on a highway. When I confirmed that we were, he spurted, "I can't wait to tell Mommy that I rode a bus on the highway." I have got to get my kid out more.

Our seats were in the fifteenth row of the upper deck, right behind one of the endzones. We reached our seats just as Leon Washington was running the opening kickoff back for a TD. Sweet! The sun was shining, the view was great, the Jets were winning. Hell, even the Bud I was drinking seemed flavorful (that didn't last much beyond about five sips). Like baseball games, Max was not at all interested in what was going on in the game, but he really seems to like the stadium experience, particularly the consumptive part of it. Hot dog, hot chocolate, Cracker Jacks, soft pretzel, chocolate chip cookes. I spared no expense or trick in keeping him there for three straight hours. When the Jets sent the game into overtime with an end of regulation field goal, Max informed me, for not the first time, that he wanted to go home. Good parenting won out over devoted sports fan, and we left. This enabled me to a) keep him happy, b) beat out the crowds leaving the game, and c) miss the inevitable Jets loss.

It is almost embarrassing to me what pure joy I derive from attending sports events with my children. It is not just a simple matter of "I enjoy spending time with my kids." Duh, of course I do. But there is something else about being at the game with my boy, just looking over at him sitting next to me as I am shouting at the players or the refs, he enraptured at the raw density of his hot chocolate...I just cannot get enough of those moments. On the way home he told me the game was boring ("there's nothing there to do") and he ranked his favorite moments of the day as follows: "I liked the bus ride the best, then the marathon and Jets game."