Posted: November 7, 2005

Athletics: New York Marathon Nearly a Bridge Too Far

Recent success put Liz Maguire in good frame of mind for test

By Mark Sutcliffe , The Ottawa Citizen

Liz Maguire at the Ottawa Athletic Club Corporate Relay

There's a perfectly timed photo from 25 miles into the 1994 New York City marathon. Right away, you can tell that something isn't right, because the two runners in the picture are going in different directions.

The leader of the race, German Silva of Mexico, has just turned a corner while another runner continues to run straight ahead. Silva has a look of determination on his face, but all around him are spectators with their mouths wide open and their fingers pointed toward the other runner. With just over a mile to go, Silva had taken a wrong turn. He left the course and surrendered the lead.

Seeing the horrified expressions of the spectators, Silva turned around and eventually regained the lead and won the race, earning a place in the lore of one of the world's great races.

This morning, more than 35,000 runners will cover the same legendary route through New York City's five boroughs. The race was founded in 1970 when a grand total of 127 people paid one dollar to run the marathon. Only 55 of them finished.

In the peak times of the race today, there will be more than 200 people finishing every minute, or more than three per second. More than 85,000 people enter the lottery to run New York.

Liz Maguire of Osgoode will be one of thousands doing New York for the first time. "If you're a marathon runner, it's one of the ones you have to do," says Maguire.

"It just feels so good to be there," says Heather Thomson of Ottawa, who ran New York in 2003. "The crowd is thick all along the course. You feel like crying several times during the race."

Like the city itself, the New York marathon is chaotic, overcrowded and fraught with logistical problems. The city that never sleeps is practically shut down every year on the first Sunday of November. More than two million spectators line the route. Some of them, like Thomson's boyfriend, watch the runners go past, then hop on the subway to meet them again further along the course.

"The biggest challenge was getting to the start line," says Thomson. It took three-and-a-half hours to get from her hotel to Staten Island for the start of the race.

When the gun goes off, the runners begin by crossing the Verazano Narrows bridge into Brooklyn. That's the standard photo you'll see the day after the race: an overhead shot of the bridge filled with a sea of runners. The athletes then travel through the neighbourhoods of Brooklyn to Queens, then the Bronx, where they get a view of Yankee Stadium, and finally run through the skyscrapers of Manhattan, finishing in historic Central Park. But even though she's barely ever seen New York, Maguire won't be looking at the landmarks.

"It's not about sightseeing," says Maguire. "When I'm running, I don't notice anything. I'm very focused."

New York is known as a tough course, if nothing else because you have to climb up and down five bridges during the race.

"I've read quite a bit on the website and talked to people who have done it," says Maguire. "I've heard from some people that it's a tough course. But the only real hills are climbing the bridges. And that can be a relief to some of your muscles, better than if you just run on a flat course for the whole race."

Maguire ran the Toronto Waterfront marathon six weeks ago. In her fourth marathon, she finished seventh out of almost 600 women. In a previous marathon, she broke three hours, which puts her in the category right below elite runners.

She signed up for New York mostly to enjoy the experience, not intending to push too hard. But when she won the Rattle Me Bones 10k race in Ottawa two weeks ago, in a personal best time, her thoughts about New York changed. "I'm not going to put any pressure on myself, but I think I'm going to take it a little more seriously," says Maguire. "I've obviously recovered well from Toronto."

Although she has fond memories of her race, Thomson's New York experience was not entirely positive. In the first half of the race, she began to have trouble with her iliotibial band, a common and dreaded knee injury for marathon runners. That and the surprising heat made the last half of the race a struggle.

"I didn't enjoy the run through Central Park as much as I would have if I was feeling well," she says.

But after the race, Thomson was treated like a hero by New Yorkers. "If anyone hears that you ran the marathon, they're great to you. If you're waiting in line at a restaurant, they'll say, oh, come on in."

Many runners have the desire to run New York, but Thomson is even more ambitious. She wants to do a marathon in each American state and each Canadian province. So far, she's done Miami, Boston, New York and Toronto. She'll run Philadelphia in two weeks. After that, only 55 marathons to go. And yet, in spite of her goal of running everywhere once, she'd consider doing New York a second time.

"It was an awesome race," says Thomson. "Definitely one of my favourite running experiences."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2005

This story originally appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and is reprinted with permission

[Editor's Note: Liz Maguire ran 3:06:44 in the New York City Marathon on Sunday]