By Dave Murphy
This year, I managed to get a place in the New York Marathon, a run I’d always wanted to try, in a city I love. I arrived a few days before the run to visit the expo to pick up my number, shirt and other memorabilia. My wife and I also took advantage of the official 5k ‘Dash to the Finish’ run organised for Saturday morning, taking us through central Manhattan and through the marathon finish line.
The run itself goes through all 5 boroughs of the city, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and The Bronx. The start line is on Staten Island which involved a catching a subway at 5.30am through Manhattan, boarding the Staten Island ferry and being loaded onto a school bus to take us to the start location. The ferry journey was just fabulous, providing some calm before the storm and gave some amazing close up views of Lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.
I arrived at the start location at 8am and sat around trying to keep warm on a very cool clear morning and making plenty of visits to the many portaloos, before my start about 2 hours later. Crossing the start line takes you straight out of Staten Island over the 2 mile long Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. The first mile is the steepest part of the run and you get amazing views of the Manhattan skyline as you reach the apex of the bridge. The run down the bridge takes you into Brooklyn and the Marathon proper starts. The support along the whole course is incredible with people 3 or 4 deep.
The 11 miles through Brooklyn is quite undulating, but nothing too extreme. The race preview I attended strongly advised not to expend too much energy on this section as the second half of the run is more testing. The support is quite overwhelming. The crowd are incredibly supportive and the noise is deafening at times, they love their banners – ‘Pain is just the French word for bread’, ‘I trained for months to hold this’ and others that are perhaps too rude to print!
As with the London Marathon, runners split into 3 different courses for the first few miles to ease congestion, but it’s still pretty crowded when we all join up at 8 miles. The mile markers are very clear along the whole course, though you soon find out the distance on your watch is nowhere near actual distance, partly due to a little weaving around other runners, but also GPS issues with tall buildings. Water and Gatorade are available at each mile and plenty of friendly volunteers at each water station. Toilets are also at each mile, though there were queues at the first few miles. The atmosphere was intensified by music on much of the course either played over speakers or by live bands.
Leaving Brooklyn into Queens over the Pulaski Bridge marks the half way point of the run. The run seems to have gone quite quickly at this point, with no major problems. The Pulaski Bridge, which is quite steep, is a forewarning of upcoming issues. There are 5 bridges on the course, 4 of which involve quite big climbs. There’s just a couple of miles through Queens before you take the Queensborough Bridge across to Manhattan. It’s been renamed as the Ed Koch Bridge in recent years, but is still referred to as Queensborough for obvious reasons!
The most noticeable aspect of the Bridge (apart from the one mile climb!) is the fact you can hear yourself and other runners. No support is allowed on the bridge so you get time with your own thoughts, not always beneficial it has to be said! There are fabulous views of the Empire State building and lower Manhattan at this point. As you leave the bridge you swing round into Manhattan. It’s 16 miles done, but you know there’s 10 tough miles to come. There is a gradual 4 mile drag up 1st Avenue which leads into the distance, straight as a die. The crowds here are even deeper and if anything, more noisy and it’s a case of getting your head down and pushing through these challenging miles. The best banner on the course was at the Willis bridge as we crossed into The Bronx (see photo!), that push sign was brilliant! Boring fact number 463 – The Bronx is the only mainland part of New York City, the other boroughs all reside on islands.
You pass the 20 mile sign and the cheers and banners seem to be aimed at getting you through the wall, a bit late for me as I was struggling by then. Just a mile or so in The Bronx before we headed back into Manhattan over the (thankfully) very flat Madison Bridge. From the race preview, I knew the run from here is mainly downhill. We took advantage of this as we moved through Harlem. The music here changed from rock and pop to soul and blues, but I was so tired I didn’t really notice. Just one step in front of the other, until I reached mile 23 which I knew was one of the remaining hills – another mile long climb. It wouldn’t be noticeable normally, but a killer at this point in the run. Worth mentioning here that people who stand at mile 23 to tell you there’s only 5k remaining, should be banned! (Yes, we know and it really feels too far away!!).
I was in full run/walk mode by this point, but at top of the hill you cross into Central Park and it’s a steep downhill. You can feel you’re nearly there and just after mile marker 25 there’s a 1 mile to go sign. It becomes confusing when they change to metres for the rest of the countdown (800m, 400m…)! One final hill at the ‘400m to go’ sign, but at the top you can see the finish line.
I expected I’d feel quite emotional but was too tired. Of course, I ran that final section until I crossed the line – needed to look good for the photos! So many feelings and emotions at that point and, for me, there’s nothing like crossing a Marathon finish line. Relief, pain, joy and immense pride. The first two soon disappear but the pleasure and sense of achievement take over and never really leave. As I ran the course, 2 million spectators told me I was awesome and I really felt I was at the end! However, they also told me ‘You got this!’ but at no point did I ever feel that was true!!
The marathon was really well organised from the pre-run emails, to the expo, the travel to get to the start through to the run itself. The ten thousand volunteers are incredibly friendly and helpful. The city takes the run seriously, but creates a party atmosphere all the way along the route. It’s undoubtedly a tough course but I absolutely loved it!