Dear Diary:

We drove more than 200 miles to see our daughter run in the New York City half-marathon in March, stopping overnight on the way and waking up at 5 a.m. to get to the course on time.

Her group of runners was to leave Prospect Park at 8:10 a.m. and cross the Manhattan Bridge about five miles later. Her knee had been hurting and she wondered whether we should make the trip.

We parked at 88th Street, took the subway down to Canal Street and waited on the Manhattan side of the bridge, where the runners would turn toward the F.D.R. Drive.

As we waited, we tracked her progress on an app that showed us she was coming our way. We loved the wait. We absorbed New York City all over again: the cheerful encouragement of strangers, the Yankees and Mets caps on all kinds of people.

Then she arrived. We had told her to look for us to her left, where we would be waving her college flag. But we had ended up on the right. We called out to her, and she darted over and jumped to give me a high-five.

We walked as fast as we could to the Q train, took it uptown and emerged at 55th Street and Seventh Avenue. After meandering through the crowd and security checkpoints, we got to the finish line in Central Park. She crossed it just a few minutes later.

— Jim Hall