Crossing my line

Back from adventuring so will keep telling the marathon story.
Running across the finish line brought a mixture of total relief, elation and aching legs! I felt overwhelmed at the thought that I'd actually done it. August 2009 I could hardly run 3 miles. In December I decided to run the marathon, it was craziness. Running with 44000 people is....big. Parts of the course are really congested and the water stations crazed and a little dangerous as it's easy to run into someone or slip on the thousands of discarded cups. Along the way people have also dropped kit so at times it's all pretty treacherous. Crazily at times spectators would cross in front of runners, really dangerous for both runners and spectator. Despite all of that people were amazingly good natured. You see some remarkable courage from other runners; people with disabilities hanging in there, exhausted folk determined to finish, friends and strangers supporting one another.
Crossing the line everyone is out of it and crowded into a small space as we get channeled through to pick up our medals,get our heat sheets and our bags with food and water. I quickly cooled down and had to figure how the hell to get out of Central Park. Took me a little while and it was with no small amount of horror I realized that I had to walk up and down some stairs OMG. Navigated that and worked my way through the crowd to meet up with Rose who had warm clothes and chocolate milk. Got to our meeting point, no Rose. In the end I had to leave and would confess to it taking me an hour to walk a mile. I just wrapped up in the heat sheet and concentrated on taking the shortest route possible back to the hotel. I felt bad for not seeing Rose but had to keep moving or risk seizing up entirely. Real highpoint had to be random strangers congratulating me!