Earl Wilson/The New York Times Buzunesh Deba and Tigist Tufa leading the women during the New York City Marathon in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Welcome to The New York Times’s live blog of the 2013 New York City Marathon.
The marathon hits the city’s five boroughs Sunday, concluding an unusually tumultuous 12 months in marathon racing that included the cancellation of last year’s event and the Boston Marathon bombings in April.
Follow along here on Sunday for a live report on the action, mile by mile and stride by stride.
Priscah Jeptoo, age 29 of Kenya, surged from behind to defeat Buzunesh Deba in the women’s race.
Jeptoo’s time was 2:25:07, at an overall pace of 5:33 per mile.
In the men’s race, Geoffrey Mutai and Stanley Biwott, both of Kenya, have pulled away from the pack to lead at mile 22.
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Priscah Jeptoo taking the lead from Buzunesh Deba in the women’s elite division of the New York City Marathon. Jeptoo has caught Deba just before Mile 24, coming south in Central Park, and opens a lead. Deba has not challenged her.
With just three miles to go, the gap in the women’s race is only 38 seconds. Deba’s pace remains a steady 5:34, while Jeptoo draws closer. Tufa has dropped to third.
As they head up First Avenue, the main pack of runners still faces a bracing north wind of 17 miles per hour. Although the temperature has gone up to 51 degrees, it’s 45 degrees with wind chill.
Nicholas Thompson wrote last night on The New Yorker website, “Élite marathoners come in two forms: those who race the clock and those who race to win.”
Which of these women out there is racing to win? Jeptoo has closed what was initially a 3:30 gap down to about 1:30 and is speeding up. Jeptoo won the London marathon and got second at the Olympics. She was favored to win going into this race but has run conservatively so far. The strategy worked for Firehiwot Dado and Deba herself in the last NYC marathon in 2011, where the first 20 miles can prove unforgiving.
There are six miles left to see if Jeptoo is too late.
Seth Wenig/Associated Press Tatyana McFadden crosses the finish line first in the women’s wheelchair division of the New York City Marathon. Tatyana McFadden has won the women’s wheelchair race. She is the first to win four major marathons in a season (Boston, London, Chicago, and now New York). The 24-year-old American won with a time of 1:59:13, and a pace of 4:33.
Wakako Tsuchida of Japan, 39, was three minutes behind for second place. Manuela Schar, 28, of Switzerland took third in 2:03:53.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times Volunteers pour water for runners during the New York City Marathon in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. In honor of Daniel Deriso’s first marathon run, his family scrawled words of encouragement onto half a dozen colorful poster boards and taped them to the front of his family’s home. His aunt, Maria Manetta, has lived along the marathon route in Long Island City for the last 30 years.
“We want him to see we’re cheering for him,” she said.
Deriso is some 50 pounds lighter than he was a couple of years ago. To get in better shape — he was a baseball player in high school and college — he started a running regiment. For the last year and half, he’s been clocking five to six miles a day.
Like many, his hopes to race last year were dashed by Hurricane Sandy. This year, he is running for the charity Team for Kids and is scheduled to run his second-ever marathon in just two week in Philadelphia.
— John Otis
Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Elite men’s runners competing during the New York City Marathon. While the women’s race has largely involved a runaway Buzunesh Deba and her training partner, Tigist Tufa, minutes ahead of their rivals, the men’s race has been typically tactical, with a pack of a dozen or so runners jostling for position through the first half of the race. They have crossed the half-marathon, cruising through the strong headwind on the Pulaski Bridge, and are now running together in the relative silence of the Queensboro bridge.
Geoffrey Mutai, Meb Keflezighi, Stephen Kiprotich, Wesley Korir and Martin Lel have all shared parts of the lead. As a subplot, Tsegaye Kebede and Kiprotich are battling to win the 2012-2013 World Marathon Majors championship, worth $500,000 to the winner.
Keflezighi has been the highest ranked American. Running his eighth marathon in New York, he fell several weeks ago. But through the halfway point, he remained within five seconds of the leaders. The lead pack, once about 18 strong, has thinned to about a dozen.
Deba and Tufa are off the Queensboro Bridge and onto the long stretch of First Avenue, greeted by screaming crowds cheering on their hometown front-runners. At mile 16, the duo averaged 5:34 pace. While their lead over the core pack is considerable, their pace is not approaching the decade-old course record of 2:22:31. The headwinds may have something to do with that.
Priscah Jeptoo appears to be working to close the considerable 3-minute-plus gap that her opponents have drawn over the first half of the race.
They will now battle it out over the last 10 miles of the race.
Jason Decrow/Associated Press Police and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters fly overhead as runners cross the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at the start of the New York City Marathon. Expected finishers at this year’s race: 45,000 to 48,000
Of the 66,109 entrants from last year’s cancelled marathon, 21,999 chose to run the race this year. (Many of them will be wearing bracelets and T-shirts to politely remind people that they trained for this sucker twice.)
Percent of them that will be men: 60.72%
Age of the oldest male entrant: 93, Jonathan Mendes
Non-U.S. country most represented: France, with 3,300 runners
Spectators along the course: 2 million
Volunteers: 8,000 to 12,000
Pounds of quinoa, shaved almonds and apricots consumed at the Marathon Eve
Dinner: 3,000 pounds
Tubs of Vaseline: 220
World Marathon Majors prize kitty, to be split between the men’s and women’s champions, awarded by the six Major races: $1 million
Energy and smoothie bars on hand for the start of the race: 30,144
Cups of coffee at the start: 55,000 cups
Massages booked for Monday: unknown
— Mary Pilon
The world’s fastest marathon runners are almost to a person fanatical about what they eat. Journalists, not so much. The New York Road Runners puts out a nice spread at the media center on the 36th floor of Mandarin Hotel, a few blocks from the finish line. Plenty of plates of fruit, soy fruit smoothies and carrot juice. But the most popular items seemed to be the strips of crispy bacon, piles of scrambled eggs and the enormous block of parmesan cheese. The selection of muffins and urns of coffee didn’t go wanting either, or the soda. Writers, it seems, need their fuel, too.
— Ken Belson
Marcel Hug of Switzerland has won the men’s wheelchair race. Hug, 27, clocked an unofficial time of 1:40:14, or 3:50 pace per mile. There was a crowd at the finish; he barely emerged as a victor in a group of five men who finished within two seconds of each other.
The runners-up were the 40-year-old from Russian Ernst Van Dyk, who took second place in 1:40:14; and the 32-year-old Australian Kurt Fearnley, who took third in 1:40:15.
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Buzunesh Deba and Tigist Tufa, both of Ethiopia and the Bronx, race out to an early lead for the women during the New York City Marathon. Buzunesh Deba is making a strong effort be the first New Yorker to win the NYC Marathon since it was expanded to all five boroughs in 1976. She still has a strong lead as we approach the halfway point of the women’s race. Deba clocked 1:06:24 at the 20 kilometer mark, her training partner Tigist Tufa nearby. The two are a solid three minutes ahead of the rest of the pack.
Deba is giving people a tour of New York City, a place she has called home since she moved here eight years ago. Deba hails from the town of Asella, in the central region of Ethiopia that has produced several distance running titans.
While many of her peers on the road today train at high-altitude locales, Deba runs in Central Park and Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. While she had a brief training stint in Albuquerque, she soon returned to New York, citing homesickness. Her husband, Worku Beyi, is also her trainer.
To make ends meet in the United States, Deba worked as a baby sitter and ran in her free time as she learned English. She began to compete in marathons in 2009, including a second place finish in New York in 2011.
At the first 5K, American Meb Keflezighi led a tight pack of men at a pace of 5:03 per mile. They hit the 5K mark at 15:42. Despite the headwind, they’re taking Brooklyn at a spectacularly fast pace.
This NYC Marathon is particularly significant because $500,000 and the 2012/2013 World Marathon Majors title is on the line. In the men’s race, Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda (the 2012 Olympic Marathon champion) and Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia are fighting for it on the streets of New York right now. The award goes to whoever has accumulated the most points at majors over the last two years (only a runner’s top four finishes count). Currently, Kebede has a 15-point advantage on Kiprotich. If either man wins the race, they win the title.
The average income in Uganda is around $550 a year, and it’s just over $400 in Ethiopia.
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Participants arrive at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island for the start of the New York City Marathon. “The start of the New York City Marathon is one of the most spectacular moments in all of sport,” Bill Rodgers, who won in 1976, has said. The first wave of runners shiver in the 46 degree weather, shedding their final layers of clothes as they await their moment in the corrals of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Meanwhile the elite men take the starting line.
Ethiopian teammates and Bronx residents Deba and Tufa have taken a huge lead, soaring through the first 5K in 17:43. Their pace is 5:39 per mile. The rest of the women’s pack, still about 20 runners deep, went through in 19:03, or 6:05 per mile.
The women have moved into Brooklyn.
The often-overlooked but truly amazing wheelchair race is a high-stakes game for Tatyana McFadden this morning. Should she win, she would complete an epic Grand Slam sweep of the Boston, London, Chicago and New York marathons in a single year. McFadden was born with spina bifida, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. A decorated sprinter, she has 12 medals — three gold — from the last three Paralympic Games, in Athens, Beijing and London.
McFadden has been a trailblazer in disability litigation and is planning to compete as a cross-country skiier in her native Russia at next year’s Paralympics in Sochi.
— Mary Pilon
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Jason Miller, second from right, participating in an early morning Jewish prayer service at Fort Wadsworth at the Marathon Starting Village on Staten Island before the New York City Marathon. It’s not often that this field gets a shot at competing head-to-head and setting records, so these runners are ravenous. The field includes 16 women who have run under 2 hours 27 minutes, 11 women who have run under 2 hours 24 minutes, and several Olympic and world champions. While runners from Kenya are favored, it could be anyone’s day.
Here’s a quick look at some women to watch.
The 2010 champion of marathons in New York and Los Angeles, Kenya’s Edna Kiplagat has been on fire since claiming her title here and ran a personal best of 2:19:50 at the London marathon last year, but she had a disappointing 20th place finish at the London Olympics. Her 2013 season has been strong thus far and Kiplagat clinched the world championship title in Moscow this year. She is coached by her husband, Gilbert Koech.
Priscah Jeptoo of Kenya is a benevolent rival of Kiplagat and defeated her in the London Marathon this year. She was the runner-up in the marathon at both the world championships in 2011 and London Olympics last year. This race could really come down to these two Kenyans, who are both eligible for the $500,000 prize money for the World Marathon Majors title at stake today.
Firehiwot Dado of Ethiopia is the defending champion of the New York Marathon, winning the race in 2011 with a time of 2:23:5, a personal best. She finished fourth in the 2012 Boston Marathon and set an event record of 1:8:35 at the 2012 New York Half-Marathon. She has won the Rome Marathon three consecutive times.
Buzunesh Deba could be the first New Yorker to win the race since the it was expanded to all five boroughs in 1976. An Ethiopian based in the Bronx, Deba has a personal best of 2:23:19 and has won marathon titles in San Diego and Los Angeles. She withdrew from the 2012 Boston Marathon due to a foot injury, but finished second at the Houston Marathon this year.
American distance veteran Amy Hastings of the United States will make her New York Marathon debut this morning and won the U.S. Olympic trials in the 10,000 meters last year, earning her a berth to London. (She had finished fourth in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials.)
Hastings is running today with her training partner, Kim Smith of New Zealand, who finished in fifth place at the New York Marathon in 2011. She finished 15th at the Olympic marathon in London and won the Brooklyn Half earlier this year witha time of 1:11:24.
And distance running buffs will be pleased to see Joan Benoit Samuelson in today’s elite lineup. At 56, Samuelson, an icon in the sport who won gold at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, the year that the women’s marathon was introduced, will run the New York Marathon this year for the third time, having competed here in 1988 and 1991. Samuelson, who was inducted into New York Road Runners Hall of Fame this week, finished the Boston Marathon in 2:50:29 shortly before the bombs went off, a world record for her age group (55-59).
— Mary Pilon
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Runners in the women’s elite field take off early in the New York City Marathon. The first pack of women have started the race and have cleared the first bridge. Buzunesh Deba and Tigist Tufa, both of Ethiopia and the Bronx, have pulled away from the group for an early 100-meter lead. The core pack remains about 20-women deep. This is a bold move — but they’re teammates from New York City’s West Side Runners club, so it can’t be a surprise. This is a historically difficult strategy to pull-off, however, as we last saw in 2011, when Mary Keitany of Kenya of pulled a similar strategy and faded to third place in the last few miles in Central Park. Deba placed second that year.
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Runners disembark the Staten Island Ferry on their way to the start of the New York City Marathon. 
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Santiago Battilana, from Spain, rests his feet against a tree as he awaits the start of the New York City Marathon near the starting line at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. Autumn is for runners and this November Sunday morning has proven no different. It’s on the brisk side, 46 degrees and windy in Staten Island—but it’s the kind of day these runners trained for throughout August. It’s cloudy, the wind is gusting at about 10 miles per hour and is expected to pick up to possibly double that. It’s coming in from the north and blowing down Manhattan, so it will be a headwind for the first 20 miles of the race (with a respite on the final stretch as runners head south down Fifth Avenue and Central Park). Runners will be able to draw upon the extra hour of sleep they got due to the end of daylight savings time last night, however.
Since before dawn, 47,000 of them have been trickling into at Fort Wadsworth via buses from Manhattan and New Jersey or shuttles from the St. George terminal of the Staten Island Ferry. They’re scavenging energy bars and coffee from the stands spread around the area, and some are resting up under the canopied space where it’s a bit warmer. (Most of the area is open-air.)
The pro women should start their race in 10 minutes.
At the start area in Staten Island, there were 11 runners from the Indigenous Marathon Project, based in Canberra, Australia. This is the first marathon effort in a 4-year-old project, set up through the great Australian runner Rob de Castella to promote “good role models and good health” among native Australians, said Colin Sampton of Canberra. The runners, all wearing handsome black jackets with their club name on the back, would start together in the first wave, “but we are at different levels,” Sampton added. Did the runners derive any glow from running in the same race as the elite runners at the front of the pack? “Good on them,” said another runner. They were running for their own reasons – a sense of unity, so far from home.
— George Vecsey
Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times Runners pass through a security checkpoint before the New York City Marathon. By 7 a.m., runners were unfurling on chilly Staten Island, marking progress already from last year, when the race was cancelled on the Friday. The start at Fort Wadsworth could have been impacted if the government shutdown was still in effect, but by all reports, things were operating smoothly at the starting line. Meanwhile, at the finish line area in Central Park, police with coffee cups in hand were already roaming Columbus Circle and hot dog salespeople were getting ready for the ravenous runners and their fans that will arrive in a few hours.
A key question, even in the first few hours, will be what is the overall vibe? In talking to runners in recent weeks, hostility still lingers over the marathon’s cancellation, but all may vanish with the running warm fuzzies at the (heavily secured) finish line. Hard to believe that it was only a year ago that runners were fanned across the city redistributing marathon supplies such as water bottles to damaged boroughs, or making their shadow race in Central Park.
— Mary Pilon
Uli Seit for The New York Times David Katz, a finish line coordinator, sets the clock before the New York City Marathon. The men’s race will probably be led by Geoffrey Mutai, a Kenyan who won in 2011 by finishing in a course-record 2 hours 5 minutes 6 seconds, and Tsegaye Kebede of Ethiopia, who may be tired after his strong fourth-place performance in the marathon at the world track championships in August. The top American contender is Meb Keflezighi, 38, who won in 2009 but whose training for this year’s race has been checkered with injuries.
Two Kenyans should lead the pack on the women’s side, going after the decade-old course record of 2:22:31. Priscah Jeptoo has consistently been one of the world’s top marathoners in recent years. She will be challenged by Edna Kiplagat, who won the marathon at the world championships in August. The Bronx resident Buzunesh Deba, an Ethiopian who finished second in the race in 2011, should be a front-runner as well.
They will be followed by an expected 47,000 finishers. Many of them — although fewer this year — are raising money for charity. Some runners are seasoned veterans — such as Jon Mendes, who turns 93 on Sunday — while many others are testing themselves at the 26.2-mile distance for the first time. The runners will be cheered on by two million spectators (some of whom, like me, will not be running because of injuries.)
Everyone on the course will remember the day. A first-time marathoner, Mary Kate Burke, said: “As a Girl Scout growing up, I used to give out water around Mile 20 on First Avenue, where the crowd thins and the quiet Bronx is approaching. You learned a lot about the human body and its foibles, about the pain. I can’t believe I’m going to be one of those people I used to watch. It’s going to be the best tour of my hometown I could ever ask for.”
The gun goes off for the pro women at 9:10 a.m. Beforehand, read about the race’s $1 million in security efforts or about a local team of competitive immigrant marathoners, or check out an essay by New York Road Runners’ chairman, George Hirsch, about the founders of the American distance-running movement. A video breaks down the marathon by the numbers.
from Digg Top Stories http://sports.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/02/highlights-and-analysis-new-york-city-marathon/?hp
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