What a weekend it was for Don Hoenig of Belfast.

Saturday afternoon, the state veterinarian with the Department of Agriculture was on the sidelines coaching his Belfast High girls soccer team to the school’s first Eastern Maine Class B title. After that, it was off to a high school pizza party as police cars escorted the team bus and a caravan of cars with blinking hazard lights in a makeshift victory parade.

Hoenig didn’t have much time to savor the win, though. He and wife Lynn had a long drive ahead of them. Hoenig, 52, was going to New York City to run in his first marathon.

He picked one heck of a race for his debut – the 34th New York City Marathon. Actually, he didn’t pick it. Youngest daughter Sara entered her name, her dad’s, and older sister Leigh’s into the annual lottery held to determine who gets into the 35,000-runner field. Two of the three Hoenigs’ names were drawn. Ironically, it was Sarah’s name that wasn’t.

“We left around 4:30 p.m. and arrived in New York at 12:30 a.m.,” said Hoenig, who stopped at Sarah’s home in Queens before heading over to the race office to pick up his bib number and register (the office is open 24 hours on race eve). “We went to bed at 2 a.m. and got up around 5 because I couldn’t sleep.”

Rather than brave the street traffic, the sleep-deprived Hoenig family elected to take the subway to the Staten Island Ferry terminal and ride the ferry (no charge) to a park near the Verrazano Bridge.

The Livingston, N.J., native and his daughter arrived minutes before the start of the race and lined up in the first group to start after the “elite” runners. The Hoenigs were in the “blue” group, which meant they expected to finish the 26.2-mile race in four to five hours.

While the familiar strains of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” played, a cannon shot heralded the start and off the blue group went at 10:10 a.m. It didn’t take long for the running relatives to become separated in the packed field and Don was soon on his own. He found unexpected support from some of the New York residents, however.

“I borrowed a blue Belfast High tank top with BELFAST in yellow letters and I noticed all these Irish guys were cheering me,” Hoenig said with a chuckle. “They kept yelling ‘Go Belfast’ because they all thought I was from Ireland.”

The race was more grueling than Hoenig, who has been running nine to 12 miles a week and playing adult soccer the last decade, expected. The fact that the race was held on a sunny 70-degree day didn’t help, even for someone who upped his training regimen to 35-40 miles per week.

“I died. I ran out of steam and hit the wall about 19 miles into the race,” he said. “I started to walk and jog, I didn’t want to, but it got hard just putting one foot in front of the other.”

Hoenig’s goal time was to finish in four hours, 15 minutes. He did indeed finish despite cramping up and limped across the finish line with a time of 4:50:19. Leigh finished the race in 5:12:58. The winning times were 2:10:30 (men) and 2:2231 (course record) for the women.

“They give you a medal after you finish and they give you some kind of Mylar heat shield thing to put on and then put you on a path you can’t get off to cool down,” Hoenig recalled.

Hoenig felt uncomfortable and was given a packet of salt to put in his water, but then he began cramping up again.

“I sat down eventually and all the muscles in my legs just started cramping up. Two guys started rubbing my legs down and after working on me for 20 minutes, I got back up,” said Hoenig, who was one of the last to leave Central Park (runners are dismissed by groups). “My family thought we looked pretty bad. They said I was gray and my lips were blue.”

Lynn, son Scott, and Sarah were able to follow the progress of Don and Leigh through Scott’s wife, who was following their progress on the NYC Marathon Web site. Each runner has a microchip attached to their shoelaces and those chips emit signals at each race check point. This allows officials to police cheating and allows fans to follow the progress of their favorite runners via computer.

“Jen would call my family to let them know where we were,” Hoenig explained. “They had these big fluorescent signs and I saw them at three or four places on the course.”

The family was supposed to attend opening night of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” on Broadway, but the two marathoners were feeling rundown.

“I think I started feeling normal again about two hours after the race,” Hoenig said. “My leg muscles were twitching involuntarily for two or three hours afterward.”

Hoenig said he was regretting his decision to run as he finished the final six miles, but afterward, he felt differently.

“I was thinking I’d like to do this again. If you’d asked me right after, I’d have said no way, but overall, it was a fabulous experience. Hey, I finally got my name in the New York Times, although I need a magnifying glass to see it.”

Hoenig finished 22,049th in the field of 34,662 runners and Leigh was No. 27,038.