October 25, 2008/New York Times
Getting Ready for the Marathon
Huffing and hobbling along the running path in Central Park, Matthew Long stood out against the smooth-striding runners swarming the park to prepare for the New York City Marathon.
Mr. Long, 42, a New York City firefighter and a former triathlete and competitive marathoner, once had a smooth, swift stride himself, but he was critically injured when he was hit by a chartered bus as he was biking to work during the transit workers’ strike in December 2005.
The bus pinned him and his bicycle to the pavement at a Midtown intersection. He underwent three days of emergency operations and received more than 60 pints of blood.
He was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where doctors spent several days just trying to keep him alive, then began to treat extensive damage to his right shoulder, pelvis, both legs and a foot, and repair severe injuries to his torso and gastrointestinal system. He needed skin grafts and muscle grafts, and parts of his body had to be rebuilt.
Doctors said Mr. Long’s fine physical condition helped him survive. He had been working as a fitness instructor at the Fire Academy on Randalls Island and had just run the New York City Marathon in 3 hours 13 minutes 59 seconds, an average of 7 minutes 20 seconds per mile. He was training for the Boston Marathon.
After the accident, he had to learn to walk again, and he still uses a cane. But he told his physical therapists this spring that he would take his salvaged body, rebuilt with pins and screws and rods, and compete in the New York City Marathon on Nov. 2.
In May, he did a mile -- for the first time since the accident -- in 24 minutes, the pace of a brisk walk. He is now down to 14 minutes.
“I will finish if it’s physically possible, whether it’s 8 hours or 10 hours,” he said after his workout on Thursday. “Those 26.2 miles are part of my journey back.”
“I wanted to do it on the grandest of running stages,” said Mr. Long, who will wear his orthopedic sneakers and F.D.N.Y. T-shirt and make the best of his running stride, with its awkward hitch. He will be flanked by two friends, for balance, protection and support.
Mr. Long’s motivation is the sum of many things: 40 operations; 5 months in the hospital; the fear that he would never walk again; a sense of valor tested at the World Trade Center on 9/11, where he helped rescue trapped comrades.
He still struggles to make sense of how a transit strike brought him and the bus together. It was chartered by Bear Stearns for employees during the strike. Mr. Long was biking to work from his Midtown home, rather than driving because of vehicle restrictions during the strike.
The bus hit him when it turned right from the center lane of Third Avenue onto 52nd Street. The driver, who received a ticket for the turn, said he never saw Mr. Long, who was traveling uptown on Third Avenue.
One of the defendants in a suit Mr. Long filed over the accident was the Transport Workers Union Local 100. He contended that the accident would not have happened if the union had not gone on strike. That part of the suit was dismissed, but Mr. Long still speaks angrily about the union’s leadership for ordering the illegal strike. He is still suing the driver, the bus company and Bear Stearns.
Before the accident, Mr. Long had finished 30 triathlons of various lengths, including the 2005 Ironman in Lake Placid, N.Y., in which he ran the marathon part in 3 hours 44 minutes, after swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles.
He has regained much of his physique, and 40 pounds he had lost. He also has titanium rods in his left leg, from hip to heel, and a nine-inch titanium rod in his pelvis. Nerve damage has left his right leg shorter than his left, and wobbly and hard to keep in line. His gastrointestinal system has been slowly rebuilt.
Mr. Long does 20 minutes of stretching in bed before getting up in the morning, and says his pain is constant. He has a new bike, but, haunted by the accident, he has taken it outdoors only once.
Mr. Long grew up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, the second-oldest of nine children. His family runs a liquor store there, as well as three bars in Manhattan. His father is Michael R. Long, chairman of the state Conservative Party. Two younger brothers, James and Edward, are also in the Fire Department.
Friends and relatives kept telling Matthew Long that he was getting better, but he often did not believe them. Then, after reading an article about a cyclist in Massachusetts who was similarly maimed by an oil truck, he contacted the man.
“I told him, ‘I need your help because I don’t want to live anymore,’ ” Mr. Long recalled. “He told me, ‘Things have gotten better for me. If you work hard, they will get better.’ ”
Mr. Long, who is single, moved to his family’s home and roomed with his brother Edward. At that point, he said, “I was crying and saying, ‘I wanted this, I planned on that,’ and finally I just stopped and said, ‘I will run again.’ ”
Even when he was relearning to walk, Mr. Long clocked himself on his crutches: 250 feet in 6 minutes. He worked daily with doctors and physical therapists and moved to an apartment on the Upper East Side, where he could be near Central Park. This summer, he completed a five-kilometer race (3.1 miles) in Prospect Park -- 18 minutes a mile -- steadying himself with a baby stroller designed for runners.
Chances are slim that Mr. Long will ever fight fires again, but he has returned to work at the academy, giving motivational talks to new firefighters.
“I tell them I thought I was training for the marathon and the Ironman, but I was training for life. The doctors said if it wasn’t for my physical condition, I’d be dead.”
