It Will Humble You - 2026 NYC Marathon Recap

Six NYC Marathons. Six different lessons. The marathon has a way of humbling you. No matter how carefully you prepare, it reminds you that you're not entirely in control of your circumstances, much less the outcome. I've run six NYC Marathons over the past nine years, and each one has taught me this lesson in a different way.

2017: 4:30:01: My first NYC Marathon, while navigating infertility challenges; it's going to be ok.

2019: 5:14:39: Nine months postpartum, dealing with injuries related to tendons being prone to injury while nursing.

2022: 4:42:47: One of the hottest NYC Marathons on record. At mile 18, I learned my two-year-old had been transported to the ER for a high fever.

2024: 4:53:38: Sick with a fever and coughing up rock solid phlegm.

2025: 4:25:40: Finally, a PR! Stoicism, David Goggins, and refusing to be defined by my circumstances.

2026: 4:53:26: Humble pie. Life turned upside down, training interrupted, and a confrontation with avoidance.

The Season I Couldn't Wait For

Coming off my 2025 personal record, I was elated. After years of marathons that hadn't quite gone according to plan, I'd finally achieved a result I was proud of, and I couldn't wait to see what I could do next. I had a Day 1 mentality and was mentally back in training almost the next day. My goal for 2026 was 4:15, and I was excited to build on everything I'd accomplished.

Although marathon training is typically structured around an 18–20-week cycle, I think of myself as training year-round. Those 20 weeks are special, though. They're almost like the Christmas season to me, filled with anticipation and familiar rituals I look forward to every year.

Long runs along the Hudson River Greenway to the Little Red Lighthouse in Fort Washington Park, crossing the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey, the NYRR 18-Mile Training Series with its three loops around Central Park, and the inevitably rainy Staten Island Half. Then there are the massages, the blisters, stretching in the most random places, and, of course, the big chocolate chip cookie and orange juice after a long run.

I actually enjoy training more than race day itself. I love the routines, the gradual progression, and the satisfaction of putting in the work. There's something wonderful about spending months preparing for a single day, even when you have no guarantee of how that day will unfold.

By September, though, life had become overwhelming, and I had to stop. I'd completed roughly half my formal training cycle, and it was genuinely difficult to let the rest go. I wasn't simply worried about missing my goal of 4:15. I was losing the part of marathon running I enjoyed most, after spending nearly a year looking forward to it.

That disappointment was difficult to reconcile. I'd spent the beginning of the year imagining what I might accomplish, and suddenly I was facing a very different reality.

The Decision Not to Run

I told people I wasn't running. I'd decided to defer, but I couldn't quite bring myself to follow through.

Every time I thought about missing the race, I became emotional. I couldn't imagine not crossing the Queensboro Bridge, running up First Avenue, climbing Fifth Avenue, or making that final turn into Central Park. These are places I've come to associate with some of my favorite moments in New York City.

At the same time, I couldn't bear the idea of running a disappointing time. I was angry about the circumstances, but I was also beginning to recognize how much of my decision was driven by the fear of being seen falling short of my own expectations. I didn't even want my children watching me run a race I felt unprepared to deliver.

I'm a perfectionist. I like to show up prepared, give my best, and hold myself to ambitious standards. I've never considered that a bad thing, and I still don't. But I began to wonder whether my expectations had become so rigid that they were preventing me from participating in something I genuinely loved.

I was also discounting the preparation I did have. I'd completed four half marathons earlier in the year, roughly half my formal training cycle, and had nine years of running and five previous marathons behind me. I wasn't starting from zero, even if I wasn't starting with the preparation I'd envisioned.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I was treating readiness as something binary: either I'd completed the training plan or I hadn't. Either I could deliver my target time or I shouldn't participate. Yet preparation is cumulative, and experience doesn't disappear because one season goes off track.

Eventually, I decided to run.

Race Day: Working With What I Had

Once I'd made that decision, something shifted. I stopped spending so much energy worrying about the outcome and became laser-focused on execution. My priorities were simple: avoid injury, manage my effort, and deliver the best performance I could with the preparation I had.

I worked hard throughout the race, making decisions in the moment and trying to keep the gap between my goal and actual finish as small as possible. I couldn't recover the training I'd missed, but I could control how I approached the miles ahead of me.

And to my surprise, I had a wonderful time doing it.

Somewhere along the course, I caught myself thinking, I'm actually doing this. And it's nowhere near as scary as I imagined.

I finished in 4:53:26, compared with my original goal of 4:15. That's 38 minutes and 26 seconds slower than I'd hoped. For someone who knows how much effort goes into improving a marathon time by even a few minutes, that's a substantial difference.

But I also hadn't anticipated how satisfying it would be to give my best under the circumstances. I'd spent weeks worrying about how disappointing the race might be, only to discover that the experience itself was far more enjoyable than the anticipation of falling short.

A Different Way to Think About Performance

I've spent years thinking about my marathon performances in hours, minutes, and seconds. When I compare my 4:15 goal with my actual finish of 4:53:26, the 38-minute difference feels enormous. But expressing that same difference as a percentage, roughly 15%, has unexpectedly changed how I see it. It doesn't erase the gap, but somehow it feels less embarrassing, particularly given the circumstances.

I work in advertising technology, where we're constantly evaluating and optimizing metrics like eCPM. In Q4, for example, a 15% increase can be perfectly reasonable given seasonal demand. And if a partner's eCPM moves 15% in either direction, we don't automatically cut them off. We have a conversation, negotiate, optimize, and figure out what's driving the change. We consider the broader relationship and the opportunity before making a decision.

Yet I almost didn't show up for my sixth NYC Marathon because I was afraid of missing my goal by approximately 15%. I was prepared to abandon something I loved over a performance variance that I would have approached far more thoughtfully in my professional life.

And unlike a business negotiation, I couldn't recover the training I'd missed or change the circumstances that brought me to the starting line. But I could still optimize what was within my control. I could manage my pace, make adjustments, protect myself from injury, and work to minimize the gap. That's exactly what I did, and I genuinely enjoyed the experience including the real-time management of an annoyed achilles tendon.

I find it remarkable that I was willing to give a business partner more room to adapt and improve than I was willing to give myself.

A Lifetime of Running

On Marathon Monday, I met two NYC Marathon streakers who had been returning year after year, through their best seasons and their worst. Some runners eventually trade running for walking, but they continue to participate. They saw a streaker in the making in me, and I cannot deny the observation.

I don't want my relationship with the marathon to depend on whether I'm capable of running a particular time. I'd love to be doing this decades from now, even if my ambitions and abilities look very different.

Their perspective made me reconsider how narrowly I'd been defining success. I've spent years measuring my progress in finish times, and I don't intend to stop setting ambitious goals. But there's also something appealing about measuring success in years of participation, experiences accumulated, and the willingness to keep coming back.

Looking at the marathon this way changes the significance of 2026. It wasn't simply a year when I missed my time goal. It was a year when I nearly walked away from an experience that matters deeply to me because I was afraid of what the result might say about me.

The Constraints We Learn to Live Within

This experience also made me think about how I've approached other parts of my life, particularly my career.

As a working mother raising three children, including neurodivergent children, I've spent years making difficult trade-offs between competing responsibilities. Those constraints are real, and learning how to operate successfully within them has required considerable effort.

What I hadn't fully appreciated until this training season was their cumulative effect. Decisions that make perfect sense individually can, over time, narrow the opportunities we're willing to consider. We become accustomed to working within certain boundaries, sometimes without revisiting whether those boundaries still apply.

I've also been thinking about how perfectionism can reinforce those limitations. We hesitate to pursue a role because we don't meet every qualification, or we discount years of accumulated expertise because we lack one particular experience. I've certainly been guilty of focusing more on what I haven't done than on what I've already built.

I've been reading The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels, and its illustration of avoidance has stayed with me. The idea that we can become so invested in avoiding discomfort that we limit our own possibilities resonated with me, particularly as I considered why I'd been so reluctant to run.

Of course, there's a difference between genuine constraints and the limitations we impose on ourselves. Not every obstacle can be overcome through determination, and not every risk is worth taking. But I do think it's worth examining whether we're making decisions based on an honest assessment of our circumstances or protecting ourselves from the possibility of disappointment.

I had very good reasons for missing training this year. Those circumstances weren't imaginary, and I couldn't simply wish them away. What I could reconsider was the conclusion I'd drawn from them: that because I couldn't show up as I'd originally planned, perhaps I shouldn't show up at all.

Looking Ahead

Next year, my marathon goal is four hours. It's more ambitious than the 4:15 I originally hoped to achieve this year, and I know it will require a serious commitment to training. I intend to give it everything I reasonably can.

But after six marathons, I also know that preparation doesn't guarantee an outcome. Illness, injury, weather, family responsibilities, and any number of unexpected circumstances can change even the best-laid plans.

I don't intend to lower my expectations. What I want to change is my relationship with them. I'll continue setting ambitious goals, preparing carefully, and working hard to achieve them, while recognizing that some variables will always remain outside my control.

I want to keep learning from my results without allowing them to determine whether an experience was worthwhile. And I want to be more thoughtful about the difference between a genuine reason not to pursue something and the discomfort of knowing I might fall short.

2026 was about confronting avoidance. In 2027, I want to overcome it.