Marathon Sunday
The single most New York event there is
Running the New York City marathon is number one on my NYC bucket list. Attending it at least once is perhaps my strongest recommendation to anyone who finds themselves near New York City in the fall. It’s the most collective, positive energy I’ve ever felt, in a city that people often feel is rooting against them.
It was a beautiful November day and I had just come back from a weekend upstate. I got off the train in Harlem with my weekend bag over my shoulder and a book in hand. Overwhelmed by the race day verve–especially after 48 whole hours in the quietude of Mother Nature–I wandered the roped-off streets for a few minutes. Eventually, I found a great spot atop a gate pillar on a sun-soaked bend just south of 125th Street.
Doing my best gargoyle impression, I opened whatever nonfiction I was laboring through at the time. Hoping to tune out the noise and the people – a pointless and evergreen New York endeavor, regardless of the day – my attention quickly shifted. In what seemed like an effort to instill confidence in each of the individual 30,000 runners, a woman in front of me took on the role of Harlem Cheerleader, shouting “you got this!” to every single passerby. And just a few feet down from her was a mother-daughter duo in banana costumes alternating their offering “Banana? Water?” to any potentially hungry or parched participants.
Take the subway, at any time of day or year, and you’re bound to find a family of bananas or a woman who won’t stop yelling, but I’m not sure there’s another day in NYC with this much collective positivity. Only 20 minutes had gone by and my marathon outlook had already upgraded from “I’ll probably never even run a half marathon” to “I want to want to run in this thing.” Not yet ready to run, but fully committed to the desire to run it.
The idea of running for more than 30 minutes had never been of any interest to me, until March 2020 when running was one of the only things we were allowed to do. During minute 50 of my longest ever run at the time, I achieved the elusive runner’s high and was immediately hooked. Like a junkie trying to recreate the first hit, I quickly ran my first 10K, then 10 miler, and ultimately a DIY half marathon with a friend. Any time I visited a new place, I had to browse Strava for the best places to run.
Running, like New York, became a part of my life, my identity. But seeing people run distances I can’t fathom at paces I can’t reach, I’m reluctant to call myself a runner in the same way I’m reluctant to call myself a New Yorker. I’ve unfortunately been on injured reserve for most of this year, so I’ll just be spectating on Sunday, offering my Harlem-Cheerleader-inspired words of encouragement. However, this time, I won’t make the mistake of bringing a book, because not even the most captivating page-turner will suck you in like the energy of New York City on Marathon Day.
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