New York City Marathon was this Sunday and counted with approximately 5,000 runners from different parts of the globe, and which half of them were women.
This run collected funding for more than 300 charities, which gave people different reasons to participate. Some people did it for the help it can provide. That is the case of Todd Ohlmeyer, coming from Austin Texas. He, as reported by Pix11, is raising money for Action for Healthy Kids. Three years ago he ran for the DetermiNation team of the American Cancer Society, and now her niece -Janie Lanvin, 26 years old- is following his path as well. She just ran her first marathon in help for the New York Road Runners Youth Programs and managed to raise thousands to her cause.
Other people do it as a symbolical meaning. The Cameron family is an example of that. Jay Cameron, his brother Peter and his cousin Courtney are running in honor of Jay’s dad who passed away four months ago from prostate cancer, as reported by Pix11. His father was a big fan of the New York marathon since he watched it from his window on 59th street and 1st avenue. His widow, Eileen Cameron, rectifies this.
The champions of the marathon
Others, of course, go to do an incredible performance and try to win the price of being the first ones finishing the marathon. That is the case of Ghirmay Ghebreslassie, a 19-year-old guy from Eritrea, who won the male first place this Sunday. He ran the 26.2 miles in 2 hours, 7 minutes and 51 seconds. He is the youngest person to win a NY marathon, Tom Fleming (in 1973) and Alberto Salazar (in 1980) coming right after him.
Luca Rotich, from Kenya, and Lelisa Desisa, of Ethiopia, did an excellent job as well and were trying to win Ghebreslassie, but it was on the twentieth mile that the Eritrea runner got a big advantage. In the end, Abdi Abdirahman got third place.
Women are not left behind. Mary Keitany, from Kenya, has won her third consecutive New York Marathon. There have not been a woman that does this since Grete Waltz, who won five consecutive NY marathons from 1982 to 1986. Keitany´s timing was of 2 hours, 24 minutes and 26 seconds. As she was running, people started calling her “The Boss of New York,” as reported by ABC7NY.
The American Tatyana McFadden was the first woman in a wheelchair of the run. The 27-year-old runner made a time of 1 hour, 47 minutes and 43 seconds. She also won a gold medal at the Rio 2016 Paralympics for the 15-mile mark and had also been a champion in other marathons such as London, Boston, and Chicago. On the men´s side, the Swiss Marcel Hug won for his second consecutive year.
Dick Traum is now the first person with a prosthetic leg to end this career with a timing of 7 hours and 24 minutes.
The essence of running
In a Qz article, a journalist tells us her story about running and how it changed her life. She decided she would be running the New York marathon, but she had no idea how would she get to do that.
At first, the doubts inside herself were too big to believe she could do it. But with time and thanks to the environment that surrounded her, the started seeing and feeling that she was more than capable of achieving her goal.
She learned that the first step was to assume her ambitious goal, this would make all the stress she had to focus on the “work” part, in which she trained herself to be ready. She joined many running groups who encouraged her along the way, helping her grow the confidence she lacked before. They helped her eliminate her doubts. This made her see it as a new challenge she had taken and as something she wanted as well.
This optimism energy was a key factor, she says, to prepare her mindset. She also saw that running is an egalitarian sport. Everybody can do it. Does not matter the place where they form, the gender, the careers, jobs or interests they have. It only matters that they are there and they want to run.
She believes like other people have commented Pix11, which the energy transmitted at the moment is vital as well. For this year´s marathon, the crowd was composed of more than two million people on the sides of the route screaming, shouting and chanting support words, phrases, songs to the runners. The cheers from them were unique and amazing.
All this context is an extra that people use to boost themselves towards getting to their goal. Running, just like Annalisa Merelli from Qz wrote in her article, is a lesson to life. People can go slower sometimes, other times faster and take a rest now and then, but they will keep going and pushing through.
Source: ABC 7 NY