The New York City Marathon

Photos by Rabbitwolf Creative

The New York City Marathon

Race at the Center of the World

Words Jeff Merrill

At the Spring Lounge on the outskirts of Little Italy in Lower Manhattan, a man sits at the bar alone just after lunchtime on the Saturday before the New York City Marathon. There are people around him, but he doesn’t have company. He’s dressed in loose-fitting jeans, an aqua green windbreaker and white New Balance shoes- not the kind that the brand reps are slinging to influencers at the glitzy welcome parties in midtown.

A Corona bottle sits on the bar in front of him on a stack of smaller bills with a hundred on top. When the bottle gets low, the bartender comes over, grabs a few bills from the stack and replaces it with another. No words exchanged.

It’s a ritual that I assume didn’t need introducing when the man sat down. The act of it, as well as the stack of bills on the table let the bartender know that he’s from here, he knows this place and knows how to survive in it. And he’s going to stick around for a while. A suburbanite who’s flown in for the race doesn’t have the slightest idea how to survive in the concrete jungle, just like the act of living in a quiet Sacramento suburb and bellying up to the bar at a local Applebee’s for some 20 oz skinnies is a foreign concept to this city-dwelling specimen. The difference is that the arcing streets with tract homes wouldn’t eat him alive, spit him out and send him shivering back to the place that birthed him.

Surviving in New York City is a point of pride. It’s a city built by people who wanted to establish something completely new, and it’s become a place that attracts people who want a piece of the action. There are native New Yorkers- a concept completely foreign to me. The idea that a map of the subway can exist in the human brain like a system of tunnels in an ant colony, and that brushing past someone with a centimeter separating the two of you on the sidewalk and being completely apathetic to their living existence is a normal part of life.

Are people really meant to live that close together? That many of them? For their entire lives? My gut reaction is to race out of it and make peace with the place I came from, rather than chip away at small personal victories and try to carve out a slice of the mass. What if it never happens?

This is why it’s so interesting that people come to New York with the goal of being seen, to ‘make it’. Brand marketers sit down in their zoom meetings months before the marathon, stare at their coworkers’ boxed-in faces and say: “how are we going to show up in New York?” The fact is, by the time they sit down, they’re already too late. The people of New York, if they answer at all, say: “what are you going to bring to New York?” Runners come to do ‘something big’ in New York. But what can anybody do that hasn’t already been done? You won’t cut through the noise. The toughest crowds are the ones that have already seen it all. They’ve seen the reign of Billy Rodgers- 4 straight, passed to Alberto Salazar- 3 straight. They saw Grete Waitz win 9 and Mary Keitany win 4 and Paula Ratcliffe take 3. Shalane Flanagan ran it first in 2010 and stepped away for 7 years to run in Boston, Houston, Berlin, London, LA and Rio before coming back to win it in 2017. They saw Meb Keflezighi win it at 34, 5 years after his silver medal run in Athens. They’ve seen Joe Dimaggio, Andrew Carnegie, Jay-Z and Barbara Streisand. Who do you think you are? Frank Sinatra?

The New York City Marathon course is fittingly regarded as the toughest of the 6 world majors. It is not for flat track bullies. It doesn’t give a damn about records. When Tamirat Tola was added to the Paris Olympic field to navigate the hardest marathon course in Olympic history, he became the favorite to those in the know because he had won in New York, setting a course record over 3 minutes slower than the world record. New York doesn’t need another credential on its CV to let you know that it is the BIG Apple. Let the other cities use pacers and flat courses to try to make their names.

In the words of Saturday Night Live overlord Lorne Michaels: “There’s a thing that happens when you grow up in a city like Toronto. People are always saying- I think the Italian food here is as good as any restaurant in New York. You know where they don’t say that? New York.”

The fact that the marathon exists in New York is quite enough. The city sits unimpressed with your talent, you will never beat it. No one will set a world record in New York because you can only survive in New York, and succeed on its terms. The winner in New York tends to be the runner who knows how to do it there. The winning streaks illustrate this. Call it street smarts.

Des Linden, as hard a marathoner as they come, who famously won the Boston Marathon in the year of the race’s worst conditions on record, a freezing, sideways, downpour, has never gotten a grip on the course in New York. “It’s challenging… I sort of hate it.”

When asked to give a recommendation for the race, she said: “Come to New York, you won’t PR.”

It stands to reason that the hills that make the course tough in New York are man-made. They’re the bridges connecting the boroughs to the rocky island at the center of the world- The Verrazano, Pulaski, Queensboro, Willis Ave. The people make sure there are no kings in New York. There is a Queens.

Although they may not be impressed with your talent, New Yorkers will line up 5 deep along the course for the entirety of the 26.2 mile journey touching all 5 boroughs to stare you in the grimacing face and revel in your toiling discomfort. When you are breaking and pushing through, when your stride goes from flowing to a truncated shuffle in the place they inhabit, the one they and their forebears have built to the skies out of stone and steel quarried from the bedrock they chiseled themselves, they will accept you in the moment, because there is no faking the marathon. If there is one thing New Yorkers despise, it is a phony, a fugazi.

The saying goes, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. I went nearly the entire piece without saying it, but it’s hard to avoid the truth. There’s no easy way to make it in New York City and nobody really wants to watch you sashay through the streets, gliding up to the tape to break it with the flick of a wrist and a gentle bow. To smugly taunt the course with a matador’s cape would spit in the face of everyone who’s busted their hump for a stack to sit their Corona atop. They want to see you gored against the ropes, trying to solve the puzzle, gutting it out, holding your side.

Consider the New York City Marathon your path to making it, if making it is getting the recognition of the locals by way of catching their attention, however briefly. No one will give you a Jeter-like cap tip, those are reserved for the Rodgers, Keitanys, Keflezighis, Waitzs, Flanagans, Obiris, Tolas. But if they see you vomiting on your own name you’ve scribbled on your race bib, their eyes might light up and their chest fill with prideful satisfaction that you’ve met the challenge and are paying your dues to make your way in the city. Maybe within the simulation of the course you’ll have become a New Yorker, until you step off and have a panic attack having taken the B Train and 2 buses to Rockaway Beach. Dope.

Tamirat Tola is back to defend his crown, having won in 2023 in a course record: 2:04:58. He won gold in Paris, setting the Olympic Marathon record in 2:06:26. He’s loping, smooth and deadly on the hills.

Helen Obiri is making a career as a pure marathon racer in the purest sense of the word, having won the rabbitless Boston and New York in 2023, and Boston again early this year before claiming bronze in Paris. Her personal best of 2:21:38 set last year in Boston is now nearly 12 minutes behind the world record, but in the most New Yorker way- that stat doesn’t mean jack s@$& on Sunday.

Conner Mantz and Clayton Young, who placed 1, 2 at the Olympic Trials (Young, Mantz) and then 8, 9 in Paris (Mantz, Young) are racing NYC for the first time.

CJ Albertson, the madman marathoner known for his race pace and race length workouts and quick double backs will jump in the contest with Americans Mantz and Young after he ran 2:08:13 two weeks ago in Chicago.

Sharon Lokedi won in NYC in 2022, and then placed third in 2023. She finished one place behind Obiri in Paris to claim 4th and will likely be marking her over the bridges on Sunday. The final mile has been speedy the past two years. There are 25.2 to get there.

Dakota Popehn (nee Lindwurm), the 3rd placer at the Olympic Trials will make her second trip to NYC, the first being a DNF in 2022. She was 12th in Paris.

Keep an eye out for Jess McClain. The Olympic Trials 4th placer in both the marathon and 10,000m was flown out to Paris as an alternate with the real possibility of jumping into the Olympic marathon. That opportunity did not materialize, which likely left McClain with a stack of dry tinder looking for a place to light it. This is that place.

Des Linden, who by her own accounts has never ‘cracked’ the NYC course is taking another shot at it. After riding the motorbike as an analyst on the broadcast last year, she’s gotten another opportunity to gauge the beast and see how she might attack it.

Short vid produced by Rabbitwolf Creative