An Israeli runner mourns members of his running club.

Yaniv Zaguri, an Israeli athlete, was tired from a 22-mile run that was part of his training for the New York City Marathon, so he decided to skip an early morning run with his club, the Sderot Front Runners, on October 7. .

The group of friends often traveled through Be’eri, Re’im and other Israeli kibbutzim bordering the Gaza Strip.

Of the three who fled that day, Zaguri said, two were killed in Hamas’ terrorist attack.

“You could say the New York Marathon saved me,” he said in an interview.

The sole survivor, Ram Hayun, wrote on an account posted on an Israeli blog dedicated to running, that he and the other two runners rushed to hide as Hamas gunmen passed by – first behind a tree, then a concrete block and then under a protruding pipe. They covered themselves with leaves in an attempt to hide their brightly colored undercarriage.

Israeli soldiers eventually reached them, Hayun wrote, but armed Hamas men ambushed the group and killed the other two escapees, Neomi Shitrit Azulai and Kobi Periente.

Two more members of the club were also killed that day, Zaguri said.

In the weeks after the attack, the group of Israelis with whom he was originally scheduled to run the marathon was canceled, too deep in mourning. Some had been drafted into the military reserves.

But Zaguri decided it was important for him to continue with the race.

“I felt that if I didn’t run,” he said, “I would surrender to Hamas.”

On Saturday morning, Zaguri took part in ‘Run for Their Lives’, an organized run in Central Park in honor of the Israelis Hamas had taken hostage.

He said he would run the marathon wearing a shirt that read “Never Forget,” with the date of the attack listed below.

Shany Granot-Lubaton, leader of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in New York, noted that it had been four weeks since the hostages were kidnapped, and that she hoped the global stage provided by the marathon would help draw attention to the establish a business.

“We just want everyone to understand that time is running out,” she said.