The night before the 1976 New York City Marathon, I was sitting alone at a corner table of the Magic Pan restaurant. While waiting to be served, I thought about my condition and training of the past year. I was confident of winning but knew it wouldn't be easy. Once again, my strongest competitor, Kim Merritt, the young, beautiful blonde I had been unable to beat, would be defending her title.

After I was served my dinner—two full entrees of mushroom and spinach soufflé—a British couple next to me stopped their conversation and looked at me amazedly, comparing the dishes with my size. I weighed 90 pounds.

"I'm running the New York City Marathon tomorrow!" I said. "And I'm going to win." Their eyes got even bigger. "Are you?" they said, adding that they would be at the finish line.

The blast of the starting cannon was startling. The race had begun. Several helicopters were flying overhead. Soon after we ran up the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, Kim was out of sight, as usual. The course was challenging. We ran over cobblestone streets and a pedestrian bridge, where I bumped into a St. Bernard. The hardest part was running over the steel on the Queensboro Bridge; we didn't have thick-soled running shoes back then.

But I was used to less-than-ideal conditions. I was born to Japanese parents in occupied China in 1935, and my family lived in Tokyo after World War II. Tokyo was a vast burned field. My father returned from the military looking like a skeleton. Well, we all looked like skeletons. We were always hungry. Often we ate hard soybeans that we would soak for a couple of days. And rice. A few grains of rice floating in water. No seasoning. I was about 9 years old, and I had twin brothers who were a year old. We had trouble feeding them.

My father found work as a medical practitioner in a remote mountain area north of Tokyo. I was a fifth grader. The elementary school had only three classrooms. Two grades were combined as one class, and the school was five kilometers away, so we had to walk 10 kilometers every day; there were no buses. The villages had only a barbershop and a bicycle repair shop. No bookstores or candy stores, but straw roofs and unpaved roads next to the river. The green valley looked rather strange but beautiful.

I moved to the United States when I was 28 to work as a nanny in a small town in Pennsylvania and to attend Carlisle Commercial College. Then I found a job in Los Angeles, where I started running. I wanted to run because I wanted a trophy, to tell you the truth. And I wanted to gain weight. I weighed 84 pounds when I came to America, and I figured if I ran, I would become hungry and eat more. I guess it worked.

Most people start out by doing 5- or 10-kilometer races (3.1 or 6.2 miles), but I started with a 100-mile indoor race. There was a race at the Los Angeles Athletic Club that was 100 miles, and you had to finish in one day. It was not an official race, because you had to keep count of your own laps, and 100 miles was 1,075 laps.

The first time I ran the New York City Marathon was in the fall of 1975, and I had given birth to my daughter that January. The marathon then was four loops around Central Park. That was extremely difficult because it was hilly, and after you finished a loop, you had to start all over again. I finished second to Kim. I decided to train hard for 1976.

The spectators were fantastic. Nearly 30 years later, I can still hear their cheering voices. Kim was nowhere to be seen for a long time, but I was relaxed, running at my pace, until I spotted her familiar long, blond hair. My heart started beating faster. The distance between us was narrowing, and finally I caught her outside Central Park. I ran beside her for a while, pretending I was still fresh. Then I passed her and accelerated as fast as I could, using up all my lung capacity. I was shocked to hear my own huge sounds of inhaling for the rest of the race. The first and only time I looked back to see where Kim was, I couldn't see her.

With a police escort, I crossed the finish line. Tears ran from my eyes. My body was crying from fatigue. As promised, the British couple was there and waving enthusiastically. I established a course record, 2 hours 39 minutes 11 seconds.

I didn't win any money for winning the Boston Marathon and the New York City Marathon. It's much different now. And things are different back in the small village in Japan. The roads are paved, the roofs are modernized and televisions are in every household. This year, several villages merged and became one town, Aizumachi, in Fukushima.

I visit every five years to attend a road race that was established in honor of my win¬ning the New York and Boston marathons. Its participants are few compared with those for road races in big cities, but it is a well-organized and lovely foot race. This year was its 20th anniversary.

Gorman, Miki. “As The Miles And The Years Pass By: A Runner Devoured 2 Soufflés, Then the New York City Marathon Field,” The New York Times, Sports, October 30, 2005.