A Dream Fulfilled

When Jeremy Bridgman moved to the Big Apple he had one dream: to run the New York marathon. He completed his mission yesterday. All it took was four years, four months of training, and waking up at 6:30 a.m. on a frigid fall morning.

“This is the quintessential New York experience,” said 26-year-old Bridgman about the 38th annual ING New York City Marathon.

“For some people, that [New York] experience it is going to the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty. For me, this is it.”

Bridgman moved here four years ago from Cincinnati, Ohio. He ran one marathon in his home state, but that was nothing compared to this.

The New York Marathon is the largest in the world, with 37,000 participants, and runs through all five boroughs.

The race is so popular that potential participants must enter a draft. After three years of not being selected in the draft, Bridgman was granted entry.

On marathon morning, Bridgman stared off across the water as he rode the Staten Island ferry. He wore his favorite yellow “where’s the beef?” t-shirt, checked his iPod’s classic rock playlist, and anxiously drank blue Gatorade.

He was chatty and excited.

Once the ferry docked, he took a 20-minute bus ride to the starting line. His usual talkative nature was replaced by silence.

Hundreds of runners piled out of buses into Arthur von Briesen Park.

Bridgman’s nervousness took hold. He began frantically wandering around the park looking for where to put his clothes, struggled to tie his ChampionChip (penny-sized device that tracks his time), and talked mainly in fragments: “stay loose”, “that’s not it.”

It was four months ago he began training. Running 5-7 miles each weekend, one or two short runs during the week, and not going out on Halloween had all led to this. At 9 a.m., he left for the starting line.

As Bridgman ran, his girlfriend, Lauren Buller, 24, went to Central Park. She would often run with him over the past months. Now she struggled through the thick crowd to find him. Bridgman’s friend Scott Iwata, 30, was also there.

“I’m excited to see him…and hear all his stories,” said Iwata.

The spectators were in the thousands. “I think the crowd appreciates seeing someone push themselves to an obscene limit,” said Iwata.

Ingrid Edwards, a 50-year-old volunteer and former marathon runner, understood the attraction: “It’s that New York feeling – so exciting.”

Iwata and Buller waited for a half hour. Buller was concerned she had missed him. Then, out of the crowd of tired runners, came Bridgman stumbling over. His face was blood red, his eyes watery, and shoulders were wrapped in a blanket.

Buller and Bridgman passionately kissed.

“I’m just happy to be done,” said Bridgman who finished in four 4 hours and 33 minutes.

The hardest part for him was running by his apartment in Harlem: “I knew I had my keys on me. I could have just run in there. I had cold beer in the fridge.”

With his goal of completing the marathon over, he thought ahead to his future: “Now I drink.”

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