NYC and/or Bust

“Ah, what's to see?  A woman from Norway, a guy from Kenya and 20,000 losers.” 

Jerry Seinfeld (Describing the New York City Marathon)

Friday afternoon Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday’s New York City Marathon was cancelled due to the devastation from Super Storm Sandy.  Who is that guy’s Public Relations consultant?  Around 47,500 runners, 30,000 of them out-of-towners, many of them from other countries, had been expected to take part in the 26.2-mile event, with more than 1 million spectators usually lining the route. 

I have never run the race and have no burning desire to do so.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve run a total of 26 miles in Manhattan even though I lived there a few years.  But I do have some recollections of New York City and its marathon. 

The first race was held in 1970 and competitors ran four laps around Central Park.  Fifty-five athletes finished that addition.  As the running craze swept America, race entries grew exponentially.  In 1979 the course took the form, more or less, that it is today.  The course runs through all five boroughs: Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Manhattan. 

The race starts on Staten Island.  I have been on the island exactly once in my life.  It has to be one of the most spectacular starts to a race; running over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.  The first half of the race runs through Brooklyn.  When I graduated from college in 1986 I lived in an apartment near Prospect Parkway and 5^th Avenue.  It was the only occupied building on the block.  That year I watched the runners pass the mile 6 point on 4^th Avenue. 

The race continues into Queens.  When my parents were newlyweds in the late 1950s they lived in a large walk-up apartment building in the Astoria section of that borough. 

Between mile marks 15 and 16 the race crosses the East River via the 59^th Street Bridge and enters Manhattan.  I have watched the runners coming off the bridge, feelin’ groovy as they turn north onto 1^st Avenue.  Mary’s apartment was a block from where the runners first set foot into Manhattan.  The race continues north on 1^st Avenue for 3 ½ miles.  It passes a block from the apartment I moved to on 91^st and York Avenue.  That 350 square foot studio sported a reach-in kitchen.

Athletes cover miles 18.5 to 22.5 in Harlem and the South Bronx.  If you had run the race in the 70s or 80s, you would have feared for your life in those neighborhoods.  That would have been motivation to counteract bonking. 

Miles 22.5 to the finish are run adjacent to, and in, Central Park.  Racers run past mansions built for the likes of Vanderbilt and Carnegie.  Also along that section of the course is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Within a short jog of the mile 25 point there is a statue dedicated to Balto.  Balto was a Siberian Husky sled dog who led his team on the final leg of the 1925 serum run to Nome, Alaska in which diphtheria antitoxin was transported from Nenana to Nome by dog sled to combat an outbreak of the disease.  The run is commemorated by the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.  Imagine running 1,100 miles in sub-zero, white-out weather conditions.  You’d be, well, dog tired.

The race finishes at what was the Tavern on the Green restaurant.  Mary and I held our wedding reception there in December 1990.  The restaurant filed for bankruptcy in 2010.  Later that year New York City re-opened the building as a visitors information center with a gift shop selling city-themed t-shirts and hats and other memorabilia. 

I have watched the marathon on TV a few times, but there’s nothing like being there; standing on Central Park South near The Plaza and watching the runners go by with one mile to the finish.  Hats off to all who run the race.