What does the New York City Marathon look like from the course?
It is said – often by me – that every city is at its best on marathon day. The bigger the city, the better the day, as hundreds of thousands of citizens line the courses for hours cheering on tens of thousands of runners, most of whom they don’t know.
Now take a look at New York’s sparkling autumn morning and afternoon on Sunday, the sun glistening on the harbor and downtown skyline as some 53,000 runners raced across the Verrazano Narrows (okay, some didn’t do much, but whatever who cares) Bridge, tagging all five boroughs on the way to the finish, and you have the recipe for the perfect marathon.
The people of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn take the medal for loudest and longest crowd. Tip of the hat to them, and to the folks from the South Bronx who turn that part of the trail into a mile-long fruit stand. You’ve never seen so many free bananas and oranges – and quite a few cookies and munchkins, too.
Now add in that star-studded cast of Olympians and other champions, and marathon day becomes even more perfect.
I admit bias. I’m a New Yorker. Sunday was my 15th marathon in New York City. And as my thoughts drifted from the overwhelming gratitude for all that support from a crowd as colorful as the city to the slowly increasing pain in my quads, I also kept thinking, “Wow, there must be a serious race going on out front.”
And there was.
I finished and caught up on the results: Sheila Chepkirui defeated defending champion Hellen Obiri in the final mile to win in 2:24:35 and Dutch star Abdi Nageeye topped a loaded field that included Olympic champion and defending New York winner Tamirat Tola . from 2:07:39.
GO DEEPER
New York City Marathon Results: Nageeye and Chepkirui Stun Historic Fields
Although I was sad to have missed the finish – sorry, those people are a bit too fast for me – I enjoyed what this race had been.
It was a race, not a time trial, as so many marathon races have become.
Last month in Chicago, Ruth Chepngetich, with the help of pacers on a deadly flat course, broke the women’s marathon world record with a time of 2:09:56.
The men’s races on these courses regularly flirt with the two-hour limit. It’s only a matter of time before that becomes the standard there. Then there’s New York and Boston. Hilly, undulating course without pacers. It’s all tactics and waiting for the moment to make or decide to make a move to cover that of a competitor.
It’s a race that Tola and Obiri and a host of other Paris Olympians entered with high expectations, despite having competed on a brutal course just three months ago. Because here they could make their way through the course, play cat and mouse for more than two hours and then decide when to go.
They didn’t have enough on Sunday. But what a pleasure it is to watch these kinds of races. There is a place where the limits of human performance can be tested. It will never be New York – or Boston, for that matter.
And thank the running gods for that.
(Photo: David Dee Delgado/AFP via Getty Images)
