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New York City Marathon Runner Comments
Back to New York City Marathon Information & Reviews
Course 4.7 
Organization 4.3 
Spectators 4.9
Number of comments: 604 [displaying comments 271 to 281]
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C. H. from Chandler, AZ
(11/6/2007)
"Absolute Best Crowds - Organization A Bit Iffy" (about: 2007)
6-10 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 4 FANS: 5 The Good: Great course with unbelievable crowd support throughout. Volunteers are enthusiastic and helpful. City residents really treat runners well and make for a great marathon experience. The expo, transportation, village, and starting time went off pretty well as advertised. Needs Improvement: Bag drop was very disorganized and quite chaotic for a marathon that has been around a while. If it doesn't change next year - drop your bag off early (before 8:30) to escape the crush. It is also a very ineffective corral system - the blue start lined up before 10, and then jogged to the start line for a 10:10 start. Folks just jumped the corral and things just generally got jumbled up. Wave starts work in other marathons - not sure why it wouldn't work in NYC? | |
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J. T. from Edison, NJ
(11/6/2007)
"Everything it is cracked up to be!" (about: 2007)
4-5 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 5 FANS: 5 I am shocked at the comments from people complaining about the crowds?!? Everyone knows the size of this marathon - the web site even highlights not to expect a personal best. I ran with a pace team, and even then you will be wasting energy as you move around people running at a different pace. Just relax and enjoy. This is generally not a personal best marathon. This marathon is about experiencing the best city in the world. Bands playing the Rocky theme, or bagpipes, or salsa music, or church choirs singing repeatedly for the runners. With the exception of the bridges there were big crowds cheering for 80% of the race. If you have your name on your shirt - you will hear cheers the whole long way! When I cramped up and had to walk a bit in Harlem, I heard all these cheers to carry on and got a few gentle pats on the back from supportive New Yorkers. The organization is amazing. 40,000 people speaking who knows how many languages have to be corralled to get started exactly on time. This is done with no rush, no craziness, and unbelievable spirit from the volunteers. I did not see a port-a-potty inside Ft. Wadsworth with a line longer than 3 people deep. Amazing! The long walk at the end for bag pick-up is a bit of a pain, but not the hardship people here on the board make it out to be. My bag was in UPS truck number 65, so I had to walk about 20 blocks. Hey, it is best to walk afterwards anyway. And, then you are on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for any number of bars and restaurants to celebrate. And NYC shows its kindness again with complimentary subway rides for runners immediately following the race. Only major critique: Goodie bag should be improved. I find it hard to believe that more sponsors would not want in on it. Tip for next year for locals - the EASIEST way to get to the start is to have someone drop you off from Jersey into Staten Island. You get dropped off about a half-mile from the entrance to Ft. Wadsworth and walk-in. No need to get there 3 hours early and no traffic in or out of Staten Island at that time for your driver. | |
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D. H. from northern New York
(11/6/2007)
"Still a great race despite some issues" (about: 2007)
11-50 previous marathons
| 2 New York City Marathons
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 4 FANS: 5 This was the second NYC marathon for both my wife and me, and it remains the most exciting to run. Some of the negative comments seem a little extreme to us: With 39,000 people in a race, you have to expect some traffic. With a couple of exceptions, the organization was outstanding. Check-in was very quick for such a huge race (I've encountered much longer waits at much smaller races). The expo was essentially like other expos, but bigger...who runs a race for the expo? Waiting for five hours on a chilly morning is annoying, but if you read the instructions and do the math, you know what to expect. For me and many others, the big snafu was the baggage check-in for blue-number runners: I was there at least 35 minutes before the 9:15 deadline, and the backup was already horrible. This situation was not just frustrating, it was borderline dangerous. My wife had a green number, and was frustrated by the hour-long wait after the gun: while NYRRC had clearly communicated that these runners would start in waves, the length of the delay was not announced. Why not include an estimated starting time for these runners? And there's no doubt that shuffling along in the crowd after the finish is about the worst way to treat the lactic acid buildup that I can think of. Nonetheless, the crowd support along the entire course so far outstrips any of the 20 other marathons we've run (including Chicago, the only other mega-marathon we've done) that it makes you forgive any of the hassles you encounter. | |
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C. S. from Nashville, TN
(11/6/2007)
"Considering the Size... a great experience!" (about: 2007)
6-10 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 4 FANS: 5 Most of the negative comments seem to relate to the size of the race. It's hard to have 40,000 fresh bagels!! And yes, there will be jams at narrow sections. But I have not seen complaints about the basics, like running out of water, lack of medical crew, etc... Given the size, this is an impressively organized race. We also had perfect weather.. which helped. Overall, if you have the attitude that this is a big race and that having fun, enjoying the crowd and the scenery is more important than PRs this is the race for you. If you are looking for a Boston qualifier... you might consider something smaller. My only complaint... signage. No signs at Penn Station for the expo bus. No signs at the finish directing people through the park to the east side, etc... | |
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T. G. from Massachusetts
(11/6/2007)
"Crowded but Fun" (about: 2007)
2 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 3 ORGANIZATION: 2 FANS: 5 I was so excited to run this marathon and unfortunately I was a bit disappointed. I almost missed the start because the UPS baggage drop was so congested it took almost an hour in line to get my bag to the truck. The start was ok, but I feel like I spent a couple extra miles dodging slower people and therefore never fell into my pace. At the finish, we were corralled into a narrow path that was fenced in on both sides. It was so claustrophobic that everyone around me was nauseated and passing out. Whoever organized the baggage part of the race should get a new job. Thank you volunteers and fans - you were great - but I would never go back to NY to run. | |
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B. G. from Connecticut
(11/6/2007)
"Overall a great experience" (about: 2007)
11-50 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 5 FANS: 5 This was my 24th marathon, but my first NYC. I've run Chicago, Boston and Marine Corps along my goal to be a 50 stater (22 done to date), so I had a general idea of what a large marathon would be like. I was one of those runners that was dreading the pre-race logistics and all that waiting prior to the start. It was about what I expected but the time went faster than I feared. Plenty of porto-johns at the start area and I appreciated them in the start corrals for that last-second visit. I really enjoyed the course, the fans and the other runners. I was in the 7000s area of the Green corral and found the merge with the Blue corral after Mile 3 to be a little trouble, but I tried to mentally use the crowded streets as a reason to slow myself down a bit. I finished in 3:45 and felt like I could have met my 3:30 target if I didn't have to deal with a calf cramp. The crowds were an issue (what did you expect with 38,000+ compatriots out there), but not impossible to deal with. From my experience, I think the organizers did a great job moving a small city of people through the entire experience. While a nice post-race food spread would have been nice, I can see the difficulties in pulling that off for so many people. I believe we need to be a little conscious of that. For me, I enjoy the smaller marathons more than these huge mega-marathons, but even if you do this just once, you owe it to yourself to run NYC. | |
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C. B. from NJ, USA
(11/6/2007)
"Run it once in your life...but only once!" (about: 2007)
11-50 previous marathons
| 4-5 New York City Marathons
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 5 FANS: 5 It's a big party, not a race for most runners. Too crowded, too narrow in places. And too commercial: every time you turn around there's another attempt to extract money, including at the finish. Mary Wittenberg, RD, was hoping we'd absentmindedly walk off with our chips by positioning the clipping stations at the very end? :) NYRR is a superb organization when you think about the logistical, organizational, and management challenges of coordinating with multiple city agencies to route a major marathon on public roads and bridges through five boroughs in one of the busiest cities on earth. But there were some astonishing blunders. Still, 90,000 applied for less than half that many spots so why should NYRR change? Well, they almost had injuries if not deaths this year in the baggage check area, that's why. I came out of the religious services tent to find my way to the blue area blocked by pace groups and ropes (at 8:45 for a 10:10 start, with the loudspeaker already blaring 'it's almost time to move to the bridge'). So I had to enter from the orange area and leave through the blue area, opposite ends of a narrow street of UPS trucks enclosed by chain link fencing. There were thousands of runners trying to enter and exit at the same time through both narrow portals. Took me nearly 30 min. of very scary shuffling to advance 50m to get in and another 30 min. of equally scary mob scene over a similar distance to exit. Many blue runners never checked bags; just dropped them on the ground and hoped for the best. It's the worst traffic flow design I've ever seen anywhere. If NYRR were a corporation, someone would have lost their job over this. Most runners stayed calm even when the pressure increased (think subway car with bodies packing in tighter and tighter with no place to go; I got squeezed pretty tightly). But all it would have taken was a fight (which nearly happened several times due to the culture clash of Europeans accustomed to no-holds-barred line jumping vs. American expectations of politeness) or some jerk yelling 'gun' and we'd have had a panic, with people trampled, crushed against UPS trucks or fencing, certain injuries, and likely deaths. And lawsuits. Justifiable lawsuits. When you're massively oversubscribed, you can do almost anything you want: raise fees, run out of shirt sizes early, hand out plastic bagels, force people to shuffle for an hour to pick up baggage, etc. But you don't take chances with people's lives, and that's what NYRR did this year, intentionally or otherwise. If NYRR wants to treat the Marathon as a business, which, for better or worse (and I'm not passing judgment), they are, then they must manage it like a business. Nothing lasts forever, not even the NYM brand, if it's not carefully maintained. | |
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b. s. from vermont, usa
(11/6/2007)
"great except for baggage drop" (about: 2007)
6-10 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 4 ORGANIZATION: 4 FANS: 5 This was my first NYC Marathon. Overall, I loved the whole experience. The spectators were incredible. I was in the blue zone. The baggage drop was a death-defying journey. there was no way to exit except the same way you entered. The crush of thousands of people was a bit scary at times. Everything was good after escaping that mosh pit. | |
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D. I. from Gainesville, Florida
(11/6/2007)
"You are a rock star at the NYC Marathon!" (about: 2007)
11-50 previous marathons
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 5 FANS: 5 Truly the experience of a lifetime! The city goes bonkers over this marathon. I've never experienced such crowd support! AND the NYPD was the BEST! Everyone was helpful, friendly, and supportive. The course was great with lots of views from the bridges. The end in Central Park was beautiful. Thanks, NYC, for a great marathon experience! HIGHLY recommended! | |
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r. g. from Pittsburgh
(11/6/2007)
"Tough to run for a time" (about: 2007)
4-5 previous marathons
| 1 New York City Marathon
COURSE: 5 ORGANIZATION: 2 FANS: 5 This was my first big marathon. Here are some problem areas. One you are sitting in a field for four hours before the start. Bring a blanket, a newspaper and some warm clothing. I didn't and I was freezing for four hours and then had to run a marathon. Stupid me. I listened to the instructions and got to the bus early. My mistake. Also, there are so many runners that it is virtually impossible to run for a time. I didn't bother and enjoyed the race but if I was running for a time I would have been really upset. Lastly, the finish corral was a disaster. There has to be a better way to get the runners out of Central Park. I don't know what the solution is but they have to try something. When it was all said and done it took me about 13 hours to run the marathon and get back to my midtown hotel. Overall the race was enjoyable in spite of the headaches but only because it was the New York City Marathon. No one would put up with the headaches if it wasn't the New York City Marathon. |
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