Today is one of my favorite days in New York: New York City Marathon day. At one point, I thought I'd run the New York Marathon in November and the Lincoln Marathon in May, then contrast the two races in a column. Then I sobered up, took a hard look at the calendar and ate a Krispy Kreme.

Luckily, I don't have to swear off bad carbs or devote every Saturday of my life to long runs to experience the sheer joy of a marathon. The race, which starts in Staten Island, goes over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn and threads through Queens and the Bronx before ending in Manhattan, takes full advantage of Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue, a wide, rather boring swath of asphalt that actually has been compared to O Street by several Nebraska natives. I can toddle out my front door with coffee, a muffin, the paper and a camping chair and settle in to watch a human river roll by.

It starts with a trickle — the wheelchair athletes and their unbelievably powerful arms. Next come the elite athletes, impossibly thin and moving so much faster than seems prudent at mile 7 or 8  of 26.5.

It's fun to watch the really good runners here — and, later, go inside and watch the Central Park finish on TV — but the best part is cheering on the raging flood of regular folks. These are the people who got in by lottery, and they are damn happy to be there. They have traveled from all over the globe, and they're proud of wherever it is they came from. Each wears something that reflects their reason for being there, or their reason for being — which is sometimes the same thing. They carry flags of countries all over the world and wear or wave signs that proclaim they're running for various charities or in honor — or memory — of someone they love.

There are lots of "I Love NY" T-shirts, Statue of Liberty green foam headpieces, people dressed as Santa Claus, robots, gorillas — and I always see at least one person in Nebraska gear.

Then there are the labels. Before I ran my first and only marathon, in San Diego in June 2002, people told me I should write my name on my shirt so people could shout, "Go, Kelly!" when I ran by.

Not my style.

By mile 20, oh, how I wished it were. I had thought the other runners and the California scenery would be enough to distract me, but I was suffering, my field of vision narrowed to the concrete in front of me, and it was all I could do to will myself to keep going. Anyone who could have called my name and snapped me out of my zone for a moment would have been doing me a big favor.

So now, as a spectator, I shout out every label I see because I know how much it helps. And it's fun to make people wave and smile.

Except when I'm gutting through the last six undertrained miles of a marathon, running always makes me smile. I'm grateful to coach Ted Larson, formerly of Southeast High School, to his expert coaching staff and to my teammates for giving me that gift. During those grueling two-a-day cross-country practices, I had no idea that my endorphins and I were slowly coming to associate pounding pavement with stress relief and well-being, with that sense — however fleeting — that there's peace and order in the world.

It's something I can take with me wherever I go — trail runs in the mountains, barefoot runs on the beach, laps around somebody's high school track. When I'm home in Lincoln, I still love to run one of our old high school training routes, along Sheridan Boulevard, and on several occasions I have tried to find and follow the faint white trail marking the course at Pioneers Park.

After some fits and starts, I've figured out how to love running in New York. Central Park is tailor-made for opening up on its long, looping drives. At my old job, my co-worker Emily and I would take off every Monday night at 6, run up to the reservoir, do a lap, then come back down, weaving in and out of the carriages and horses lined up in front of the Plaza Hotel.

 Prospect Park in Brooklyn is a more serene, smaller version of Central Park, with "the Ravine," a marvelous wooded area in which you literally have no clue you're in the middle of New York City.

Running on the streets of New York is trickier. Unless they've stopped traffic for a race, it's often better to head straight for a park.

But there's one special street route that, to me, is the epitome of New York exercise. I leave my front door, take a right, go several long blocks to Court Street, take another right. I run past old Italian guys sitting in lawn chairs on the curb, scores of cute boutiques and restaurants, diners and bodegas, into the heart of downtown Brooklyn, past our city center, Borough Hall. I keep going until I pass the two stately rows of trees in Cadman Plaza Park and spot the massive stone supports.

I run up a gentle incline, take a short flight of steps and find myself in the middle lane of the Brooklyn Bridge. Running the spine of this elegant bridge — with the Manhattan skyline in front of me, the river and harbor below and the crisscrossed cables above — is exhilarating. And, thankfully, it's only a little more than a mile to the other side.

Kelly Bare is a writer and editor in New York. She can be reached at kellybare76@yahoo.com.