A Madison Avenue Bridge state of mind

I'm not a religious woman, but 'spiritual' is the word I've often used to describe my experience of running the New York City Marathon in 1999.

Unlike at the Canadian marathons I've run, the crowd support at the New York City Marathon was overwhelming, with spectators standing six people deep on either side of the race route throughout the entire 26.2 miles. Toronto crowds are, at best, sparse and quiet. At worst, spectators yell at you and honk their car horns at the inconvenience your race has caused. But in New York, I high-fived ten Brooklyn cops in a row, was serenaded by a group of women who wrote a song just for us and it seemed like every tenth person screamed, GO CANADA when they saw the flag taped to my hat.

While I had tears in my eyes for most of the race, inspired by this crowd support, the most moving part of the race was when the crowd wasn't even there.

No spectators are allowed on the five bridges we had to cross, linking the city's boroughs. So, every time we started up a bridge, the screams and cheers suddenly stopped and all you could hear was the stampede of our feet on the asphalt and the heaving of hundreds of sets of lungs. This alone was intense, but when were were running up the Madison Avenue Bridge, the last bridge in the race, suddenly up ahead I started to hear murmurs.

Now, marathon runners typically stay pretty quiet in an effort to preserve every drop of energy possible, but it was clear that runner after runner was saying something up ahead. As I ascended toward the crest of the bridge, I saw a wheelchair athlete struggling up the incline ahead of me.

He had his name on the back of his shirt (as many of us do to encourage others to encourage us) and as each exhausted runner passed him, just three miles from the race's end, they said, "Go Michael."

"Go Michael." "Go Michael." "Go Michael."

Moved to tears, with goosebumps on my arms from the emotional intensity of the moment, I too said, "Go Michael," as I ran up to and past the athlete who clearly has a much harder haul than any of us.

I will never forget the beauty of that moment; the beauty of hundreds of people, uniting as one, behind this man.

Michael made it to the top and then we all descended into the thunderous cheers of the crowd waiting on the other side.