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| Image description: about 10 people standing on University Place looking south. In the distance only one Tower stands and it has a hole in it. Smoke billowing from the site of the other Tower. On the right side of the photograph an elbow sticking into the frame |
So if you've been following along i used to run a couple of marathons in a year. And until 2014 it used to take me between 4 and 5 hours. In 2014 i won the crappy Lottery and got Guillain-Barre syndrome. In 2017 I came back to Marathon running ass an athlete with a disability and it takes me between 8 and 10 hours.
Some marathons have time limits. Which makes sense because people can't stand at the Finish Line all day. But they can. (You can see the rest of the movie on ESPN +) in New York City Marathon let's athletes with disability start ahead of the elites so that we get to finish during daylight. In the London Marathon I started about 15 minutes behind the fastest runners so I also got to finish during daylight.. But they started breaking down the course and I got an alternative finish line that wasn't really the end of the world. In the Berlin Marathon I was actually advised to lie about my pace so I can start just behind the elite Runners and finish before the cutoffs. I knew what time they would be closing the course and it was like four races in one day.
But I got invited to run the Sydney Marathon and they weren't interested in letting me start early and they definitely weren't going to extend the Finish Line for my finished time. I really thought that I could get the Sydney Marathon people to let me start towards the front if not actually in front of the front. Their response was firm and final....
I'm sure that Michael and his guides can navigate the course, but ultimately, we have to consider the safety of all 41,000 participants. Moving him to an early start would be dangerous for them and for other, faster participants who will be overtaking them for the duration of the event - especially in the early, congested kilometres.
Like I said before, if he is redirected, he can continue on the roads and potentially cross the finish line before it closes at 3:40pm. If he is swept, he is more than welcome to continue on the footpath, but drink stations will close and, by the time he reaches the finish line, it will also be closed. You and the Achilles team are more than welcome to wait for him in spectator areas after the finish line closes, but the chute itself will be a construction site and will be inaccessible for anyone but site staff. Again, this is a safety measure to ensure that no one is injured during bump out, which begins very shortly after the finish line closure.
Even as I boarded the plane to Sydney I was thinking that all I needed to do was figure out how to sneak into a forward corral. If they're giving the last person to cross the starting line 7 hours and The last person to start starts 2 hours after the gun... Yeah that might have worked maybe. But I really gave it some thought because I needed accomplices i had to bring my guides with me. The more I thought of it the more I didn't want to drag them into this heist, specially after they were willing. Julie, Who was traveling all the way from Brooklyn to be my guide was okay with it because we were both getting on a plane 36 hours after the race. But the Sydney chapter of Achilles International was providing me with another guide. And I didn't want to drag them into this. Especially after they said they were willing. And to tell the truth talking to Brian who was in leadership of Achilles in Sydney really made me feel good about not trying to push my way to the front. He reminded me of my great accomplishment and also reassured me that my guide would get me to the Finish Line no matter when I started and no matter what they did on the course.
The Sydney Marathon people will offering me two choices after I got swept by the sweepers. Either accept disqualification and take a shortcut across the course... There were many shortcuts on this course because they were allowed about and backs. Or, Take a bus to the Finish Line. Richard and Sharon my wonderful guides offered me a third option. Accept disqualification, But continue on the course to the Finish Line. They knew the way.
I actually surprised myself as to how relieved I was when I accept an option number 3. It was okay that I wouldn't get an official finish. But I would run the Sydney Marathon. And I planned on finishing it.
And even sooner that I expected I was greeted by the sweepers. About 3 mi into Race we were passed by the 7-hour Pace Group. A few minutes later a couple of friendly people on bicycles rolled up and introduced themselves as the sweepers. They asked us what our plan was and we told them we planned on continuing on the course. They thought that was a great idea A half a mile later we encountered the cutoff point. We were officially given our choices, Take the cutoff or get on the bus. We told them we were choosing the third option to continue along the course. They were very cool with that. What about a half a mile later we met the man who it was not cool with.
We leaped off the course because a van was reversing towards us on the roadway. He jumped out screaming at us to get into the van. I told him I'd no intention of getting in any buses and that we were going to finish the course. He told us that was impossible-and my guide Richard said it was very possible because he knew the way. We told him we will already disqualified and he was not responsible for our safety. He flew around like a bow up doll in front of a gas station as we ran away.
A few miles later on and out and back section of the course he ran across the road to scream at us. Told us we couldn't be on the roadway because it was dangerous.We tried to explain to him that the roadway was completely empty..We can see a mile in front of us and there wasn't a vehicle. Our non-compliance to his lunacy seemed to anger him even more and he told us he would call the police if we were seen on the road again. He had no idea how many times in my life I had been involved with the police and I would be looking forward to an actual rational person to interact with.
But true to his world at about mile 15 he came running across the roadway again with the police officer. He told us he was going to have the police officer to take our bibs away. I told him fine take them away now I need a little help with the safety pins. And Richard told him he was an embarrassment to the nation.While Richard was asking this course director's name I asked the police officer to make him stop yelling at me. The cop rolled his eyes and said "I'm trying". Ben Richard did the thing that gets rid of all Karens. Ask them their name!
But I need to post this collage. On the top is a screen grab from my Garmin. I ran for 8 hours and 50 minutes. It probably would have been significantly less if I didn't have to stop at traffic lights or in a store to buy water. The bottom part of the image is a screen grab from the video of the Final Finisher. It looks like she finished in 8 hours and 50 minutes. If you watch the whole video you'll see the official last finisher 9:15 on the clock. So if I would have gotten a start near the front I would have finished in the daylight, I would have received my medal from the race officials and not from the construction workers.
Maybe in a couple years the people with the Sydney Marathon we'll do something for people with disabilities to let us finish with everyone else. I thought they would because they made me fill out a form by my doctor. She had to document two things first she had to document that I was disabled and second she had to document that I was healthy enough to finish a marathon
To repeat, i have no regrets. I got to travel to another hemisphere and meet wonderful people and enjoy a great 26.2 mile run through an amazing place. I can right 10 more blog posts about the touristy things we did. The Blue Mountains, the fact that I actually got to see a platypus, Bondi Beach, and I actually ate a kangaroo and it was tasty. But that's another blog post.I also got to travel with the three most amazing people. And my Sydney guides were like new brothers and sisters. I hope they let me know if they're ever in North America because I would travel to the other side of the continent to have coffee with them.The Achilles chapter leaders I met and my guides didn't just get me to the Finish Line of my 47th marathon they help make me a better person.
After I finished this race I looked up the qualifying standards for the Boston Marathon. If I could break 4 hours again after I turned 60 years old I would qualify. I decided to make that my super long-term goal. Just stay healthy for another 20 years And then trained hard again and break 4 hours. At the time staying healthy sounds it easy and training hard again as a 58-year-old was the hard part.I had no idea what would happen to me in 2014. Staying healthy was taken off the table.
They were people who thought I'd never walk again Let alone run. They all wrong. But the paralysis from Guillain-Barre syndrome didn't all go away. I need ankle braces so I don't turn my ankle on every step or just fall on my face. But I did come back and finish the New York City marathon in 2017 and then a bunch more So many that I lost track of how many marathons I have finished and I thought this would be a good moment to count them.
That's 42 43 44 45 46 47
I'm also the guy who literally crawled out of a hospital bed and has since finished 10 more fucking marathons. I also ran up the steps of the Empire State Building. I got to look at that building from the hospital window while they were doing experimental chemotherapy on me.
I joke that it takes me twice as long now but I get to have twice as much fun but it really hurts twice as much head for twice as long.
It's about a year later and I get to update this. The interaction I had below gave me as much joy as seeing a dolphin under the Verrazano Bridge a few weeks ago.
On the first day of early voting for the primary in 2026, this same gentleman walked in wearing a t-shirt that said "vintage 1924". It's a quiet election so when he walked up to my table, I had the time to say, sir, "I'm glad to see you back." I told him that I hope he was okay but I Googled him and I found out he was a really big deal. He told me his grandchildren and great-grandchildren asked him what he did. He tells them to look it up on Wikipedia. That's a great reason to be a grandparent.
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We had another election on Tuesday. I worked 8 out of 9 days of early voting at Brooklyn Borough Hall and I was coordinator on election day at my local bowling place, there was a bit of extra confusion during this cycle because a lot of people thought they can vote in the primary when they weren't in a political party. It seems a lot of people registered to vote last fall so they can vote in the presidential election and didn't think it was important to register as part of a political party.Some of them thought they were independent and can vote in any primary and that doesn't work in New York state. They're not listed as independents It says the word blank where it has their political party and they may not vote in a primary. We had to explain that and some people were understandably angry.on election day I worked in an unacconditioned school gym and the outside air temperature was 105° . It was actually a little cool in the gym and we were able to perform our jobs Without dripping on the ballots and our equipment did not melt.
Working at my polling places We get to have some celebrities vote. Some people from the acting world and sometimes politicians. But I got the honor of having this interaction
a voter walked up to me and said"Hi I'm 101 years old and I'd like to vote", Certainly sir but I need to know your name... He told me his name and I typed it into the pole pad. He confirmed his address and I looked and saw that he was born a week earlier in 1924. When he signed the poll pad his helper said that his signature is worth money and then we had the following conversation
he: Yes I won the Nobel Prize for medical research in 198*
me Thank you, because of medical research I am alive today
he That's why I'm voting.
By publishing this on probably already violating my confidentiality agreement with the board of elections. But whatever. With all the shit that's going on in the world right now we have to remember that we live in the greatest country in the world., because this gets to happen.
I wrote this during the June primary, in 2025. He voted again in November. He didn't come to my table but I noticed him two tables away and after he got his ballot everybody applauded at the table. I also googled him. He's an immigrant.
Last week, a bunch of my friends and I decided to jump on the train and go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A little day trip with friends that I usually meet to go running, and we decided to do something else together. It was fun just to have fun. We were all of the same mind that we were there to enjoy the museum and see as much of it as we felt like seeing, and then go back home. Amtrak tickets were three times as much money to return to New York from Philadelphia as they were to go there, so oddly enough, it was much cheaper to be in an Uber, and that provided a lot more flexibility. But that's not the subject of this blog post.
I went to museums a lot with my kids. And when you do that, it's about the kids, not the museum, so it was fun to go with adults. When you slow down, you get to look at stuff. Notice things. And I think that's kind of the point of an art museum.
If one were to ask what my favorite piece of art was, I would say that Still Life with a Tortoise came up as number one. It was up on the floor with all the old European portraits. And I turned a corner and came upon this surprise. At first, it looked like a collection of stuff that a kid would put together on the beach. But then I noticed that the things didn't go together very well. It turns out it's a still life of a collection of a gentleman's accumulated stuff. Kind of the three hundred year old version of anybody's junk drawer. Possibly by Thomas Black
My other favorite piece of art was this one to the right. Listening to the unexpected , by Yeonmi Kang. Maybe I should have taken another picture, but it was on a shelf with other objects that were all 300 years older than it and were the kind of things that royalty would wear as jewelry. I like the way it stood out from the crowd, and I like the way it looks.
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There was a section of the museum entitled "Bathing," and this painting was featured in it. I stopped to look at it because it was quite disturbing. I was somewhat relieved to see that I wasn't the only one who thought that. The first words in its description are: "In this strange and unsettling work..." If you Google Leon Fredericks, the source of life, the first item that comes up is a blog describing it as the worst painting they've ever seen what impressed me the most was that this was 135 years old. I didn't think people were that fucked up back then.
A few years ago, when my daughter started art school, I wanted to understand modern art a little better. What Are You Looking At was recommended to me as something that would give me an introduction to that. But it turned out it was more like a textbook for juniors in art college, and I didn't have the background to really continue reading it. So I only read the first third of it. But the first third of it was about the urinal.
I had forgotten about the urinal until I saw pictures of it in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The last third of our time there was spent looking for it, following the arrows towards the urinal. When we got to the spot where the arrows all led to, it wasn't there. We found out it was on tour, and it was in New York. It turns out they're all replicas anyway.
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if you just take a minute to look at this thing, this thing that you've seen reproduced many times before, you notice that Vincent van Gogh only signed his first name.
He probably overheard me saying that I wouldn't mind babysitting for that kid. He looks like the kind of kid that I wouldn't mind teaching how to play checkers or something. Or maybe a kid who is anxious to learn how to play checkers .  So it's Paul Cezanne's Boy in Red Vest. But it's not... It is Portrait of Master Bunbury AI is pretty good until it's not. |
A very common question they ask in the beginning of the survey is employment status. Sometimes it's used to screen people out because they don't want people who work in a certain field . But more often than not it's used to sort people into groups .
To the left is a screenshot of that question. Please notice on top the little red dot that indicates that you have to select one answer . At first I was going to check the box that said self-employed part-time because while I was filling out this survey I was working. They are paying me to fill out the survey. But I went down to the bottom and click the box that said disabled. Because I identify as a disabled person.
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