POULSBO — One wrong step in July nearly cost marathon runner Cotah Rose her chance to race in the New York City Marathon.

Following her first place finish at the Viking Fest Run while also placing first in her age group in other racing events, Rose was preparing to train for New York when she took one bad step back in July — one that fractured her foot.

Rose couldn’t figure out how it had happened. But she knew that all for which she had trained to prepare for one of the biggest races in the world was in jeopardy.

“I was frustrated, depressed,” Rose, a lifetime endurance athlete, said. “I was in denial at first. I was like, ‘How could this happen? What does it mean to my training goals?’”

Her running diary entries during the time tell the story of a runner not able to participate in one of her true loves.

“I am so disappointed and discouraged … I am in denial,” Rose wrote on July 6, a day after the step. “Why did this happen?”

After a week of what Rose called “denial,” she started developing a plan of action for how she could still run the race that ultimately made it possible.

She would do whatever it would take to run the New York race. Whether it was the NK supporters who had donated $4,200 to support her run for Fred’s Team — an organization created by NYC marathon cofounder Fred Lebow to benefit pediatric cancer research — or her own motivations, she was going to try anything to prepare.

After a week, she was lifting weights. And two weeks later, she was in the North Kitsap Community Pool, where she swam about a mile and a half every day.

“The pool was my saving grace,” she said.

Not much more than a month after she broke her foot, Rose was pedaling away on a bike.

“As soon as I started moving on the bike,” Rose said of her first ride Aug. 19, “I was like, ‘I’m not getting off.’”

During her injury, instead of running the races she’d had planned, she volunteered and helped others to participate in the sport — including her husband and running coach Charlie Rose’s run in the Lake Chelan triathlon.

Following about two months of pool and bike training, Rose was ready to give her healing foot a try on the pavement. On Sept. 10, she ran — though Rose called it more of a brisk “walk” — two-thirds of a mile. On Sept. 12, she increased her distance to a mile.

“We really did want to take baby steps,” Charlie Rose said.

From there, she kept increasing her distances. By Oct. 5, she was up to 10 miles and by Oct. 24, she had run 22 miles — only about four miles shy of a regular marathon.

By Nov. 7, the day of the marathon, she was ready.

The NYC marathon covers all five of the city’s boroughs, crossing five bridges along the way, beginning on Staten Island and ending in Manhattan’s Central Park.

“I call it a prestigious training run,” Rose said.

At the 17th mile, Rose passed the Sloan-Kettering Research Center — the organization that she and about 640 other marathon runners on Fred’s Team had helped raise $2.2 million for its Aubrey Fund in the event.

“Fred’s Team made the marathon experience so much larger,” Rose said. “It wasn’t just about the race. It was about benefiting the Aubrey Fund.”

At the 19th mile, she looked down at the ground and noticed a green object. It was a $10 bill. She now proudly carries the bill in a framed case that holds her race number as well.

Rose finished the marathon with a time of 3:57 and though she said she’s happy to have finished, she knows that with a healthy foot, she could have finished much faster. In her first marathon in Victoria, B.C. in October 2002, she ran a 3:36.

Nonetheless, that still meant she finished 7,222nd in the race, out of 36,513 runners at the Big Apple’s race.

She’s already run another half-marathon since New York, running the Seattle’s city version Nov. 29. She finished with a 1:39 time, the first in her 45-49 age group out of 287 runners and 70th overall out of 3,349 runners.

The marathon she’s next looking forward to most is the Marine Corps race next October, in Washington D.C. but she’s also running the Valley of the Sun marathon in Mesa, Ariz. next March.

Despite her injury and a chance to take on New York next year, Rose said she has no plans to run the famous marathon again.

“I want to keep New York the way it is,” she said.