This weekend is the New York City Marathon, the largest marathon in the world. So large, in fact, that they’ve recently decided to make obtaining guaranteed entry much tougher than it has been in recent years by abolishing the 3 strikes and you are in rule and by tightening up the standards for speed based entry. Mary Wittenberg, president of the New York Road Runners, is even contemplating turning the New York City Marathon into the NYC Marathons by having 2 marathons on back to back days so that the city can accommodate as many as 100,000 runners.
The action is sure to be great. I’m going to be rooting for Meb to repeat his 2009 win, and expect him to be the first American either way given the depleted nature of the field with the Olympic Trials coming up in January. (Don’t worry, Meb will be racing at the Trials too!)
On the women’s side, there are quite a few women with a good shot of being up front for the Americans. Buzunesh Deba could become the first New York City resident to win the marathon since it began visiting the 5 boroughs, but she’ll have to stay ahead of Jen Rhines and Lauren Fleshman.
Not excited about the race yet? Well, just check out this video of Alec Baldwin promoting the race:
If you want to watch the race and can’t get out to the streets of New York to see it in person, you can watch it on television or online. The entire race will be broadcast starting at 9:00am on NBC4 if you live in the greater NYC area, or you can watch a 2 hour summary show on NBC Sports starting at 2:00pm. You can also watch the entire race streamed live over the internet at Universal Sports for free.
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