Get your shoes (or your logo) ready: The TCS NYC Marathon starts Sunday morning – ready 50, – runners from all over the world this year, following last year’s 30, 000 or so (mostly Americans, due to COVID-related border restrictions). As usual, the legendary five-district race will begin on the other side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Staten Island, then wind its way through Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan to finish 30.2 miles later in Central Park.
What will happen? The usual triumphs, tribulations, spontaneous street events, traffic disruptions, celebrations, rivalries, parties and epiphanies, of course, in the unusually warm (60 and 2010 中*)s) Weather – so go out and cheer your partner, your sister, your cousin’s new boyfriend, your friend from accounts payable. Make a damn logo!
What’s new this year? Expand facilities to support breastfeeding mothers. Bonus, first time, for non-binary runners.
Who will win the game? (Probably not Ashton Kutcher, first of all, while he will run, so will Ellie Kemper, who both raise money for charities.) Elite women’s runners include current world champion Ethiopia’s Gotytom Gebreslase, Israel’s Lonah Chemtai Salpeter and 2010 Kenyan champion Edna Kiplaget. On the men’s side, defending champion Albert Korir will return to defend his title, with last year’s runner-up Morocco’s Mohamed El Araby and 2020 London Marathon champion Shura Shura Kitata will also return.
But this year there is also a new contender in the women’s field: Helen Obiri, also from Kenya, has accomplished a rare feat of winning the title 11 World Championships – Outdoor Track, Indoor Track and Cross Country – she will be running her first marathon in New York with an eye toward winning it.
“This is my first marathon, but after being so well prepared, I’m so excited to run,” Obiri said at the On Running Dinner at MoMA PS1 last night Tell us it’s part of On’s ambitious and very cool Point2 program at the museum this weekend. (Obiri is sponsored and trained by the On Athletics Club in Boulder, Colorado.) “It’s a strong field, but I’m also strong.”
When I asked Obiri However, regarding her game strategy, she just smiled. “You know, in a race you can’t say ‘I’m going to do this or that’. Everyone has their own race. But New York is a tough class – I just want to run smart and run well. I Going to see how fast I feel in the first 5K, after that, maybe around 12K, we’ll see how I feel.”
