It Takes Two to Run a Marathon

Two friends stuffed a grocery cart with four pounds of pasta in grocery store on Saturday in order to carbo-load on the eve of Sunday’s ING New York City Marathon.

One of the men, Terry McGovern, is a 40-year-old New Jersey native who flew in from Germany to run with his friend of 26 years, Mike Clark, a Park Slope resident.

Tomorrow will be McGovern’s and Clark’s first time running in the city’s marathon, which will attract more than 45,000 runners.

They just left , a runner’s supply store also on Seventh Avenue, where they bought new socks and energy gel. The men had a nervous excitement cruising through their veins while they decided to get iceberg lettuce, baby spinach, peppers and mushrooms to go along with their carb-centric meal with their families at Clark’s house Union Street. 

The two men finished their 18 weeks worth of training for the 26.2-mile challenge with a three-mile "tune-up" run earlier and all that’s left to do is fill their body with fuel and get a good night’s rest.

Although they are doing the marathon together, both men started running for different reasons.

“The reason I started running in 1998 was to stop smoking. I was a heavy-duty smoker,” McGovern said, who used to have a pack-and-a-half-a-day habit, but hasn’t smoked a cigarette in 14 years and has been a serious runner ever since. “I was looking for a way to quit and change my lifestyle and running is what did it.”

Clark, who has lived in Park Slope for seven years and went to high school with McGovern at Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, NJ, has been running on and off his whole life, but is not an elite athlete.

“I was never a good runner, but one thing about being an adult is learning how to enjoy something you are not very good at,” Clark said while displaying a bit of the pre-marathon jitters. “For me running is one of those things.”

Last year, like every year before that, he watched the marathoners gun through his neighborhood. He took a picture of the physical specimens and E-mailed it to McGovern, who has been working as a project manager for a consumer bank in Germany since 2002.

“Mike called me up and said, ‘If I can get you in the marathon, will you come?’ I said, ‘Absolutely!’” McGovern explained, who flew in to New York on Friday. “I am still surprised I am here, I never thought I would actually be here.”

McGovern and Clark have been training vigorously since July.

In Germany, McGovern would do a 19-to-20-mile run once a week and then about seven miles each day for the rest of the week. Every Friday he would ride his bike home from work, a 60-mile pedaling spree that would take him five hours.

“I have a very patient wife. She is a runner’s widow,” McGovern said, explaining that the term refers to a spouse whose partner spends an incredible amount of time training.

His mile time is eight minutes and 15 seconds. 

“If I finish in three hours and 45 minutes I will be a happy man,” McGovern said.

In Brooklyn’s Prospect Park or on the streets of Manhattan, Clark followed a basic novice runner’s training program. It was also an 18-week routine, which peaked at 50 miles on week 14, with a grueling 20-mile run in one day. Then, at week 15, he started to tapper down with runs no longer than 12 miles. 

Clark runs to work, at the New York Times building on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, every day. Depending on the route he takes, it is a seven or 10-mile run.

“What I enjoy most about running to work is when I am the only person on the Brooklyn Bridge at 5:45 a.m.,” he said while picking out a jar of tomato sauce in Key Food. “It gives me clarity of thought and by the time I get to work I am ready to go.”

Clark runs about an eight minute and 50 second mile. His goal for tomorrow is to finish the marathon in four hours.

The two men are planning to run together in the marathon in Bonn, Germany in April.

After they rang up the ingredients for their last dinner before the marathon, Clark explained what this race, which attracts people from all over the world, means to him:

“This is my mid-life crisis marathon,” Clark said.

Check back with us tomorrow for Mike Clark’s and Terry McGovern’s official finish time!