Gary Muhrcke was an amateur when he became the first runner to cross the finish line at a New York City Marathon, and none of the 54 men who followed him were pros, either.
Which isn't to say they weren't serious.
'They turned the clock off at 3:59,' he recalled this week.
The race's 1970 debut - staged entirely in Central Park - hardly resembled the five-borough track that has drawn millions into the Big Apple's streets on the first Sunday of nearly every November since. Adaptation, though, has seemingly always enabled the second oldest of the world's marathon majors to do more of what it does best - inspire and celebrate.
The 50th edition of the NYC Marathon will certainly test that.
A limited field of 33,000 runners will jog off the Verrazano Bridge and wind its way toward Central Park on Sunday as the 26.2-mile race returns after being wiped out in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic.
Runners make their way across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge during the start of the New York City Marathon, Sunday, Nov. 3, 2019, in New York. A limited field of 33,000 runners will jog off the Verrazano Bridge and wind its way toward Central Park on Sunday, Nov. 7, as the New York City Marathon returns for its 50th edition after being wiped out in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic
Organizers shrank the field by nearly 40 percent and are requiring runners be vaccinated or show proof of a negative COVID-19 test within 48 hours of the race. Spectators will be encouraged to maintain social distancing, and some race-adjacent entertainment elements will be scaled back to accommodate that.
The starting format was altered, too, with a fifth wave added to space out runners as they bus or ferry to the starting line in Staten Island and at the finish near 67th Street on the west side of Central Park.
No turning the clock off after four hours this time - the last group won't take off until noon, four hours after the professional wheelchair division is the first to hit the streets.
'The classic line of, "We've always done it that way," that wasn't going to be an option, ' race director Ted Metellus said.
Over the past 21 months, New York's streets have gone from eerily silent amid a crippling COVID-19 outbreak, to filled with heartache and rage as tens of thousands marched following George Floyd´s murder, and finally to a
