My blistered feet, with the help of the casualty department at Raigmore Hospital on a quiet night, are finally on the mend after pounding the streets of New York for the eight hours 20 minutes it took Inverness restaurant owner Catriona Cameron and myself to walk the 26 mile route.
It was gruelling but an unforgettable experience, well worth flying the 6500 mile round trip from Edinburgh to the Big Apple to be among the 48,000 participants who raised a collective 34 million dollars for charitable causes.
When we arrived home, my feet were in pretty poor shape and I've had to walk gingerly for a few days - each ache and pain a reminder of tramping through the five boroughs of the city that never sleeps.
Three thousand, four hundred miles on a direct Continental Airways flight to New York to run or walk 26 or 13 miles puts it in perspective.
Edinburgh and Scotland are lucky to have this flight and global connectivity. Why don't we in Inverness have a connection to our capital?
Half-way, the pilot called our attention to a spectacular sight to the right. A completely ice-free Greenland. What a sight underpinning global warming statistics. Our arrival in new York was spectacular, circling the city and marvelling at the skyscrapers protruding into the sky and between the city and hinterland housing a population of 8.5 million people - 25 per cent watching us on Sunday.
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It's the final countdown - I fly across the Atlantic today and 'New York, New York' awaits as the Archie team gets ready to line up for the 41st New York Marathon.
There were only 120 runners for the first one and less than half of them finished. It did not become a huge event until the sixth year when the route was altered to go through all five boroughs - Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. By 1978 there were 9000 competitors and it has kept growing from then to the point where last year 45,350 took part and two million spectators lined the route. At least we won't be lonely.
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