It’s been said — often by me — that every city is at its best on marathon day. The bigger the city, the better the day, as hundreds of thousands of citizens line the courses for hours to cheer on tens of thousands of runners, most of whom they don’t know.
Now factor in the sparkling day autumn morning and afternoon in New York on Sunday, the sun glistening off the harbor and the downtown skyline as some 53,000 runners bounded (OK, some didn’t do much bounding, but who cares) across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, tagging all five boroughs on the way to the finish, and you have the recipe about the perfect marathon.
The people of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, take the medal for the loudest, longest throng. Tip of the cap to them, and to the people of the South Bronx who turn that part of the course into a mile-long fruit stand. You’ve never seen so many free bananas and oranges — and a good number of cookies and munchkins on offer, too.
Now add that star-studded cast of Olympians and other champions, and marathon day gets even more perfect.
I will admit bias. I’m a New Yorker. Sunday was my 15th New York City marathon. And as my mind drifted from the overwhelming gratitude for all that support from a crowd as colorful as the city to the slowly mounting pain in my quads, also kept thinking, “Wow, there must be some serious racing going on up front.”
And there was.
I finished and caught up with the results — Sheila Chepkirui outkicking defending champion Hellen Obiri in the final mile to win in 2:24:35 and Dutch star Abdi Nageeye topping a loaded field that included the Olympic champion and defending New York winner Tamirat Tola in of 2:07:39.
GO DEEPER
New York City Marathon results: Nageeye, Chepkirui stun historic fields
While I was sorry to have missed the finishes — sorry, those folks are a little too fast for me — I relished what this race had been.
It was a race, not a time trial, which so much of marathon racing has become.
In Chicago last month, with the help of pacers on a deadly flat course, Ruth Chepngetich shattered the women’s marathon world record, posting a time of 2:09:56.
Men’s races on these courses regularly flirt with the two-hour mark. It’s just a matter of time before that becomes the standard there. Then there’s New York and Boston. Hilly undulating courses without pacesetters. It’s all tactics and waiting for the moment to make a move or deciding to try to cover a competitor’s.
It’s a race that Tola and Obiri and a host of other Paris Olympians entered with high hopes despite having competed just three months ago on a brutal course. Because here they could think their way through the course, play cat-and-mouse for two-plus hours and then decide when to go.
They didn’t have enough on Sunday down the stretch. But what a treat it is to watch this kind of race. There’s a place for testing the limits of human achievement. New York — and Boston, too — will never be it.
And thank the running gods for that.
(Photo: David Dee Delgado / AFP via Getty Images)