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Today is the day over 50,000 runners and wheelchair racers line up on Staten Island waiting to be released onto a 26.2-mile course that will take them to all five boroughs of New York City. It's also the day over a million spectators line the streets of that same city to carry these athletes of varied ability, speed and nationality through to the finish line.
The first running of the New York City Marathon was in 1970 and the course was much less thrilling. It was a series of loops around Central Park. The course has covered all five boroughs since 1976 and has been run every year but one. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the city less than a week before the marathon, setting up days of debate before Mayor Michael Bloomberg pulled the plug.
As with any major sporting event, there have been many memorable moments:
The "Six Who Sat." Six women runners -- Lynn Blackstone, Jane Muhrcke, Liz Franceschini, Pat Barrett, Nina Kuscsik and Cathy Miller -- sat in protest at the start of the 1972 NYC Marathon to change the sport's view of women runners. It worked.
Imagine running 25.7 miles, being tied for the lead and then running off the course. That's what Mexican German Silva did in 1994. Amazingly, he made up the ground, caught his fellow countryman and won anyway.
The incredible Grete Waitz ran the NYC Marathon 12 times, setting the first of her numerous world records in 1978. Ten years later, she won her ninth NYC Marathon. The most wins ever. By any runner.
Marathon founder Fred Lebow had never run the marathon. He was always too busy organizing it. But that changed in 1992. After being diagnosed with brain cancer, he celebrated his 60th birthday by running and finishing the NYC Marathon in tandem with Waitz. He died two years later. Waitz died of cancer in 2011. Today, the New York Road Runners (NYRR), who organize the marathon, honor both NYC legends with annual races: the Fred Lebow Manhattan Half and Grete's Great Gallop.
My favorite moment, though, happens every year. Race organizers wait at the finish line until every last runner has finished. Well into the evening. The NYRR is committed to making sure that every finisher is welcomed with love, support, a blanket and their medal. It's truly inspirational. I cry every time I watch this.
Running the marathon is an incredible experience. I grew up a block away from the course as it first comes into the South Bronx and every year I and my neighbors would line the blocks waiting for the runners to come off the Willis Avenue Bridge. And every year as a child I'd see all these people and tell myself that one day I would be one of them.
That day was 2015. It was surreal. As a child, I would stick my hand out hoping the runners would slap it as they went by. I was inspired by what they were doing. And now I was one of those runners. I made sure to run near the sidewalk all along the course so I could high-five as many kids as possible.
If you know me, you know how much I love my city. To be able to run the streets of every borough with roaring crowds was even better than I thought it would be. The walls of sound as you go from neighborhood to neighborhood are amazing.
Major knee surgery kept me out of the 2016 NYC Marathon, but I ran it again in 2017. It was just as incredible as two years prior. Yet another knee surgery will keep me out of today's race, but I am already planning on running it with a friend next year. I can't wait to share the experience with him. And, yes, to show off my city and the people who make the day so special -- the crowds, the staff and volunteers, and our fellow runners.
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