Marathon Runners Reflect

Twenty-five thousand people came—from the mountains, the prairies and across oceans white with foam—to wake up before dawn in the legendary city that never sleeps. And under the glowing canopy of a cloudless sky, having shaken off the chills of a perfect autumn morning, we swept across the starting line of the marathon in a sea of adrenaline. As we crossed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge the glistening harbor opened before us, with the familiar figure of Lady Liberty, torch uplifted, presiding over that famous gateway of opportunity. And yet to thousands who looked into the distance beyond the great statue, the sky above Battery Park seemed strangely empty.

So many images race through my mind as I recall the New York City Marathon. Crossing the bridge into Brooklyn, a firefighter ran with us, dressed in his heavy boots, flame-retardant coat and pants and signature black helmet. One runner beside me wore a singlet with “For My Buddies” written across the shoulders, and seven names listed down the back. Another woman I passed had pinned a picture of her late brother to the back of her T-shirt. Some ran with American flag capes fluttering behind them, and scores of others had adorned their outfits or bodies with stars and stripes. Hundreds of shouting spectators held placards reading “God Bless America” or “WTC, We Will Never Forget.” One fire truck drawn up alongside the course bore a sign, “25,000 Heroes,” which drew an overwhelming response of “You’re the heroes” from passing runners.

As I crossed the Queensboro Bridge into Manhattan, I found myself wondering what it was that motivated me and so many otherwise ordinary people to run this race. I used to think that some things one does simply defy explanation. The mere fact that a particularly difficult thing is there to be done, coupled with the discovery that one is capable of doing it, transforms the act of doing into a sort of celebration of existence that justifies itself. This was the reasoning I formerly used to explain my running.

Some time between turning off the bridge to face the vibrant crowds along First Avenue, and grasping my mother’s hand for a fleeting moment just before mile 18, I changed my mind. I decided that a marathon is about defying expectations and challenging the limits of human achievement. I run in defiance of the voice inside me that says I cannot, and my success reaffirms a deep confidence I have in the human ability to dream the impossible, and to realize such wild dreams. Tragically, I feel that the World Trade Center disaster is testimony to the fact that this miraculous human ability also has a sinister side, which is manifest in acts of inconceivable evil. And so I believe that on some level, all of the marathoners felt it appropriate that we ran together in memory of those lost in the collapse, and in honor of a resilient city and the people who have begun to rebuild it.

Running the length of Brooklyn, into Queens, up First Avenue in Manhattan, through the Bronx and then back down Fifth Avenue into Central Park, distinctions between neighborhoods melted away in my mind along with the miles. A vibrant crowd of Italians and Asians, Puerto Ricans and Hassidim, Greeks and Mexicans, whites and blacks lined the course continuously, from start to finish. Running alongside such a crowd, exchanging salutes with a group of police officers, high-fiving a row of wide-eyed children, waving to the passengers in the tram and to the clattering El as its air horn blared on the tracks above the course, I experienced such a sense of euphoric exhilaration that it was difficult not to realize what the race was really about.

As the feet of 25,000 runners beat like the throbbing pulse of our metropolis, swaying the bridges and drumming down the avenues, the runners and the vibrant throngs that peopled the sidelines were like the lifeblood of a city, beginning to flow once again through its great arteries. Yes, I felt that the marathon was really about a city coming back to life. And as I crossed the finish line in Central Park, the immortal words of a certain song playing nearby convinced me that this must be true: “I’ll make a brand new start of it—in old New York.”

Benjamin I. Rapoport ’02 is a physics concentrator in Lowell House.