28 hours and 48 minutes

That’s how long it took Zoe Koplowitz to finish the recent New York City Marathon!

Derartu Tulu of Ethiopia won the women’s marathon title in two hours, 28 minutes and 52 seconds. Paula Radcliffe, the pre-tournament favorite, finished fourth in two hours, 29 minutes and 27 seconds.

The 61-year-old New Yorker crossed the finish line at 11:15 a.m. Monday (the race was Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009) or more than a day after the start of the race.

Koplowitz, as usual, finished with her signature crutches (wrapped around her forearms) as she is suffering from multiple sclerosis and diabetes.

Koplowitz time this year’s is a little improvement from her previous tries. In 2000, she crossed the line in thirty-six hour and nine minutes to establish the world’s slowest women marathon time.

The organizers have all gone home when Koplowitz finished the race, thus she received her finisher’s medal from Ruth Brenner, the president of New York City’s chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Koplowitz is used to getting her medal from other people but the organizers. She had completed twenty-one previous New York City marathons – finishing dead last in all of them!

She doesn’t care finishing last, however.

“And so, each year, I continue to cross the finish line.  With head, thrown back and right arm raised in victory, I shout “Yes” to the morning sky.  It is one of the smallest words in the English language but also one of the largest.  It is a word of infinite power and possibility,” she wrote in her award-winning book The Winning Spirit-Life Lessons Learned in Last Place.

She’s a noted motivational speaker and had been guest in Today Show, Lifetime Network, CNN, ESPN, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, Joan Rivers, and many other national TV and radio programs.

In 2002, she carried the Olympic Torch from Georgia to Salt Lake City, Utah, for that year’s Winter Olympics. National organizations in the US have recognized her various volunteer activities. In addition, she had presented numerous motivational speeches from Hawaii to Tennessee.

Her determination had touched thousands people. They would write her letters and she would carry them during her marathons.

“I get letters all year long; I carry them with me when I run. What I do is a metaphor of life, just like the marathon itself. It means you can get somewhere by putting one foot in front of the other.”

In another page in her book, she wrote about every person having a theme song. For Koplowitz it’s “One Moment in Time” by Whitney Houston. She said the chorus perfectly fits what she’s doing.

“In every race that I run and every line that I cross there is for me that one Moment in Time - that winning moment of power and pleasure and grace.  It’s not a snapshot moment to be filed in the recesses of memory.  It’s a Technicolor moment of self-excedence and self-acceptance.  It’s a living moment of resource and possibility. A veritable encyclopedia of self-knowledge, a reference point from which to create and re-create that winning moment in all areas of my life.”

What’s the point in all these? If this “old broad” could do it, then this “old man” could do it as well. I just hope, when I finish last in the Cebu Marathon, there will be some people to welcome me!

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