I will not be running the NYC Marathon on Sunday, November 6th. When I signed up back in the beginning of the year and even after Charlotte was born, I had grand plans to find a way to make it to the start line. The NYC Marathon will always be a special race for me starting with the failed attempt in 2012 due to Hurricane Sandy followed by 2013, 2014, and 2015 when I ran it 3 weeks pregnant.

However as I started to settle more into the motherhood routine – you know the lack of sleep, constant schedule of pumping breast milk, and very little running or physical activity, it became more and more apparent that attempting to run this race may not be a good idea. I am still convinced that I probably physically could have completed the race with some kind of run/walk strategy especially after having a somewhat successful Bronx 10-Mile race experience but the thought of sitting in Staten Island for hours and then the hours it would take before I could make it home seemed too daunting.

From the time I leave the house until the time I make it back home later that day would easily be 14 hours or more especially since I was in no way going to finish around my previous times. I know that I could have found a way to pump before the start but once I started, there will not be much of an opportunity. Yes, there has been a lot of press around the woman who used a handheld pump during a half marathon and kudos to her for doing that but for me, it just didn’t seem practical.

So unfortunately, this year I will be deferring my NYC Marathon entry and proudly cheering all the runners from the sidelines. Since I will not be crossing the finish line on Sunday, I will be running the Dash to the Finish on Saturday morning so I can say that I did cross the NYC Marathon finish line every year since 2013, just not actually run the full 26.2 distance. I will be sharing recaps of the Dash and spectating the NYC Marathon next week.

Good luck to all the runners this weekend!