Running Home

I staggered across the finish line, raised my arms and was soon clutching my coveted gold medal. Was I dreaming? Pinching myself would have been pointless because the only thing I could feel was triumph. I had done what I set out to do: I had completed the 2006 ING New York City Marathon, despite an early spill and an abysmal finish time of 6:51:11. I had conquered New York—my New York.

The marathon marked my 80th birthday—a nostalgic November romp through all five boroughs of the native city I left in 1970 when my husband accepted a job in North Carolina. Standing at the foot of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge before the race, some 38,000 runners were belting out "New York, New York," but I was back in the 1940s.

Staten Island, where we marathoners set out, conjured up images of ferryboat dates and lost loves. Running through Brooklyn, my lost love was the Dodgers, a passion that made me a traitor in the eyes of my Bronx friends, who adored the Yankees. In Queens I revisited the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. The mile we ran in the Bronx revived the excitement of growing up there during World War II. In Manhattan I again screamed myself hoarse for Sinatra at the Paramount Theater.

I ran for the memories and of course for the challenge. Running has completely changed my life, but nobody who knew me as a chubby, boy-crazy Bronx kid with a passion for Krum's ice cream and a disdain for exercise would believe that.

My metamorphosis began in 1979, when I was a 53-year-old empty-nester. Divorced, overweight and down in the dumps, I had a mortgage—and an office job I despised. Low self-esteem and high cholesterol drove me to begin jogging on neighborhood trails. My body rebelled, but the demand on my muscles, joints and lungs left no room for depression. Soon I signed up for a 10K race, then told my two sons where to find my will and gave them burial instructions: See that I'm laid out in my running shoes. But if I finished the race, I promised myself, I'd quit my job and return to college.

So I did. And from the first day at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, school felt like a cruise ship and every course an exotic port. I hatched some of my most creative ideas while running on the university track. After graduating, I became a writer but kept on running. I finished my first marathon in 2000, when I was 74, and another every year after that, including a traumatized run in New York after the terrorist attack.

This time, by mile 23 at the East 90th Street entrance to Central Park, I was dragging and rubbing my bruised knee when I spotted the cheering members of my family. They were decked in T-shirts emblazoned with my photo below the words "Run Iris Run." It was all the incentive I needed. I paused to hug each one, and headed for the finish.