New York continues to amaze me. I was fortunate to witness the NY Marathon 2005 on 6th Nov and it was a good experience. This is a huge event in the NY calendar and the marathon is run for a distance of 26.2 miles through all the five boroughs starting from Staten Island and culminating at Central Park. The total number of participants is more than 30000 and you can imagine the scale.
The marathon started off at around 9am in the morning (quite a bit of fog early on) and as the day progressed sun came out. I reached Central Park about 1 mile from the finish and took up a vantage point. There was a sparse crowd at 10am and they started growing as time went on. There were people from all nationalities and most of them had some of their friends or relatives participating in the race. They were carrying banners/messages, flags and it was quite a festive atmosphere. The first race that had started was the wheelchair division and the participants started coming in to the finish line. There were huge cheers for the wheelchair runners and the struggle they had to undergo finish the race was pretty high. Wheelchairs were in all different shapes and the technique of each person was not the same.
Then as time went on, the crowds started building up and I got some French folks (about 10) next me who had two of their friends running in the marathon. They provided a lot of entertainment with their cheering and other antics. Meanwhile, the top women runners started coming up and the top two were quite close. Then the others started to come by as well and the main thing I noticed was all the runners were shockingly thin and most of them short as well. NY Mayor Bloomberg came up next with his cavalcade (this was prime time considering that everyone was awaiting the men runners) and he was supposed to flag the men’s finishers. The men’s runners passed by and the top three were all together (very surprising indeed and I later found that it became history since the top two finished one second of each other). Out of the first 15, roughly about 10 were Kenyans, no surprises there I guess. Once the serious runners had passed thro’, semi professionals and amateurs started coming in and the support from the spectators was too good to believe.
There were quite a few ‘touching moments’ in the race like a lot of people were running in memory of others, a paralyzed wheel chair bound old man was being pushed by two of his sons, old men and women above 60 yrs trying to finish the race, number of runners having cramps dragging themselves to the finish, people who did not have one or both arms and many more. It would have taken a lot of people three to four hours to finish the race and it was a great sight to see the joy in finishing the race. All the finishers get a medal and a NYC Marathon banner and I could see lots of them everywhere.
A nice way to spend a few hours on a Sunday morning at Central Park.
The marathon started off at around 9am in the morning (quite a bit of fog early on) and as the day progressed sun came out. I reached Central Park about 1 mile from the finish and took up a vantage point. There was a sparse crowd at 10am and they started growing as time went on. There were people from all nationalities and most of them had some of their friends or relatives participating in the race. They were carrying banners/messages, flags and it was quite a festive atmosphere. The first race that had started was the wheelchair division and the participants started coming in to the finish line. There were huge cheers for the wheelchair runners and the struggle they had to undergo finish the race was pretty high. Wheelchairs were in all different shapes and the technique of each person was not the same.
Then as time went on, the crowds started building up and I got some French folks (about 10) next me who had two of their friends running in the marathon. They provided a lot of entertainment with their cheering and other antics. Meanwhile, the top women runners started coming up and the top two were quite close. Then the others started to come by as well and the main thing I noticed was all the runners were shockingly thin and most of them short as well. NY Mayor Bloomberg came up next with his cavalcade (this was prime time considering that everyone was awaiting the men runners) and he was supposed to flag the men’s finishers. The men’s runners passed by and the top three were all together (very surprising indeed and I later found that it became history since the top two finished one second of each other). Out of the first 15, roughly about 10 were Kenyans, no surprises there I guess. Once the serious runners had passed thro’, semi professionals and amateurs started coming in and the support from the spectators was too good to believe.
There were quite a few ‘touching moments’ in the race like a lot of people were running in memory of others, a paralyzed wheel chair bound old man was being pushed by two of his sons, old men and women above 60 yrs trying to finish the race, number of runners having cramps dragging themselves to the finish, people who did not have one or both arms and many more. It would have taken a lot of people three to four hours to finish the race and it was a great sight to see the joy in finishing the race. All the finishers get a medal and a NYC Marathon banner and I could see lots of them everywhere.
A nice way to spend a few hours on a Sunday morning at Central Park.
2 comments:
I agree, it must have been an amazing experience to have witnessed a landmark event of a great city.
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