Before his 1st NYC Marathon, James Blake fighting back on his own terms

— -- NEW YORK -- How jarring it was -- for James Blake, for anyone who followed his tennis career, for any thinking citizen -- to see the surveillance footage that showed him being slammed facedown in front of a midtown Manhattan hotel entrance at noon on a September weekday, stripped of the padding that celebrity and wealth usually provide, his US Open VIP credential stuffed uselessly in his back pocket.

A plainclothes officer, part of a five-man team, had mistaken Blake for a suspect in a cellphone fraud case and tackled and handcuffed him without introduction or provocation.

Seven weeks later, Blake, 35, has returned to New York City to run in Sunday's marathon. It's his first, and he admits to some nerves. But he's confident about the steps he will take to try to keep others out of the frightening, demeaning position in which he found himself last month.

Blake's friends have put it to him both ways: The cops messed with the wrong guy. Or perhaps they messed with precisely the right guy. He tends to prefer the latter interpretation. He's using his name and his platform to insist that arrest procedures change, that incidents like his are carefully documented and investigated. "They messed with the right guy, because I am going to accept that responsibility and I am going to try to make things better," Blake told ESPN.com on Thursday.

It has not been a typical taper.

Blake's campaign to finish the marathon, which he hopes to do in less than four hours, was carefully planned. But he has carved 10 pounds from an already lean 6-foot-1 frame and began cramping toward the end of his last long training run, a 20-miler. He wonders how his body will react to the additional distance. "I want to finish running, not walking," said Blake, who had never strung together more than five miles before he began training earlier this year.

The September incident was an unexpected detour. Blake did not physically resist during his 15-minute detainment, but he is fighting back on his own terms now. His approach is a notably nuanced one.

Blake's British-born mother, Betty, is white. His late father, Thomas, was African-American. Blake is hardly naive about the racism that can underlie police brutality, but he declines to leap to conclusions about his own treatment. He views what befell him as part of a broader problem of misuse of power. He wants the officer who took him down, James Frascatore, to pay the stiffest price possible, and he will testify at an upcoming hearing if called. Frascatore has been named in several lawsuits alleging excessive force, and the city's civilian complaint review board substantiated Blake's account. The ultimate discipline will be up to New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton.

Thursday afternoon, Blake met for a second time with Mayor Bill de Blasio to discuss policy initiatives Blake would like to see implemented, including a more detailed protocol for use of force and the creation of a fund for victims of police brutality.

"I have no plans of suing the city and lining my own pockets," said Blake, who added that legal action would be a remote and "absolute last resort."

"My injuries weren't severe, but it can keep [victims] out of work, or [unable to care] for their kids," he said. "They don't have the ability like I do, to hire a lawyer or have an agent do research."

Blake, whose paternal grandfather was a police officer, also has made a point of expressing his admiration for the daily heroics performed by law enforcement. "These officers who aren't doing the badge justice are making it so the good officers are being punished, and I don't think that's fair," he said.

As Blake spoke Thursday, he was sipping an iced tea served noiselessly moments before by a waiter in the lobby lounge of the St. Regis Hotel. A crystal chandelier sparkled overhead, reflected in a beveled mirror over a marble fireplace. Upstairs, his wife, Emily, watched over their two napping daughters, Riley, 3, and Emma, 18 months, whose needs have sometimes trumped Blake's marathon training. "I learned to be OK with that," he said, grinning.

It was an opulent setting familiar to any player of Blake's caliber, but Blake was never the kind of athlete who let gilded surroundings go to his head.

At 13, Blake was diagnosed with scoliosis and spent the next four years in a back brace to straighten his torqued spine. He navigated the not-uncomplicated territory between a tennis-playing childhood in Harlem and a varsity slot at Harvard University, via suburban Connecticut.

In 2004, Blake cracked a vertebra in his neck when he tripped into a net post while going full tilt for a ball in practice on the clay of Rome. He narrowly escaped paralysis, but the trauma unleashed a viral infection that affected his facial muscles and vision. That same year, he lost his father to stomach cancer; Blake's marathon campaign will benefit his eponymous foundation, which supports research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Blake subsequently climbed to world No. 4, wrote a best-selling autobiography and helped the United States win the 2007 Davis Cup championship with his comrades-in-arms Andy Roddick and the Bryan twins. He won a fistful of ATP tournaments but consistently hit the wall in Grand Slam quarterfinals. Even in retirement, real-life drama has stalked him: Last year, a family of four died in a murder-suicide-arson at a home he owned in Florida.

In short, Blake has led a life that leads to empathy, and he has an acute awareness about the wider world. After losing his final professional match at the US Open in August 2013 -- a moment in which he could have been forgiven for a little self-indulgence -- he chose to make a strong and unsolicited statement about LGBT rights. So it should be no surprise that he is pushing for progress, not vengeance.

At the same news conference, a reporter noted that it was the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington keynoted by the Rev. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech. Blake's response was eerily prescient.

"I'm proud that I'm in a situation now where I don't have to face the same things [King] had to face, I don't have to face the same things my dad had to face," Blake said then. "But I also don't think we're at the finish line, which I'm proud to be a part of, hopefully helping get towards the finish line."

On Thursday, Blake noted that typing his name into YouTube now generates a collage of tennis highlights and serious social commentary. He didn't ask for the role, and the road ahead is even less of a known quantity than the looming void of the last six miles he needs to push through Sunday. But he is running with it.