Mission accomplished! Ryan Reynolds completed the ING New York City Marathon on Sunday – and lived to tell about it.

“I’m still standing. I’m very excited about that,” he told reporters after crossing the finish line in 3 hours and 50 minutes, faster than he anticipated. “It was an incredible experience.”

Reynolds says in the last leg of the race, he was motivated to keep going by one special spectator.

“When I saw Michael J. Fox on Fifth Avenue, I gained about 15 pounds in goose bumps,” said Reynolds. “It kind of pushed me through the last six miles or so.”

Reynolds ran for Team Fox in honor of his father, Jim Reynolds, who has suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for the past 15 years.

“[During the race] I thought a lot about my father and Michael and the 500,000 other people afflicted with this awful disease in the United States alone. I ran for those who can’t,” Reynolds told PEOPLE.

Reynolds’s mother Tammy and brother Terry greeted him with hugs at the finish line in Central Park.

On Friday, Reynolds told reporters that his wife Scarlett Johansson would be cheering “on the road somewhere.” On Saturday, Johansson helped campaign for presidential candidate Barack Obama at Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University.

Asked how Reynolds plans to celebrate his marathon accomplishment, he joked, “I’ll probably celebrate by eating my own body weight in raw dough.”

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