Race Like No Other: 26.2 Miles Through the Streets of New York

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Overview

When 39,195 competitors thunder over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to begin the thirty-eighth running of the famed New York City Marathon, they experience one of the most exhilarating moments in sports. But as they cross five towering bridges and five distinct boroughs, carried 26.2 miles by the cheers of two million fans and by their own indomitable wills, grueling challenges await them.

New York Times sportswriter Liz Robbins brings race day to life in this gripping saga of the 2007 Marathon, weaving the unforgettable stories of runners into a vibrant mile-by-mile portrait of the world's largest marathon.

The professionals pound out the suspense in two ...

See more details below

More About This Book

Overview

When 39,195 competitors thunder over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to begin the thirty-eighth running of the famed New York City Marathon, they experience one of the most exhilarating moments in sports. But as they cross five towering bridges and five distinct boroughs, carried 26.2 miles by the cheers of two million fans and by their own indomitable wills, grueling challenges await them.

New York Times sportswriter Liz Robbins brings race day to life in this gripping saga of the 2007 Marathon, weaving the unforgettable stories of runners into a vibrant mile-by-mile portrait of the world's largest marathon.

The professionals pound out the suspense in two thrilling races. Paula Radcliffe, the women's world record holder from Great Britain, returns with new resolve after having given birth nine months earlier; Gete Wami, her longtime rival from Ethiopia, tries to win her second marathon in just five weeks; and Latvia's Jelena Prokopcuka desperately hopes for her third straight New York title.

If the women's race plays out like a mesmerizing chess game, then the men's race quickly turns into a high-speed car chase. South Africa's Hendrick Ramaala, eager to recapture glory at age 35, surges to lead the pack as Kenya's Martin Lel and Morocco's Abderrahim Goumri stay within striking range.

While the professionals offer insight into the intense, often painful experience of being an elite athlete, the amateurs provide timeless stories of courage and obsession that typify today's marathoner: Harrie Bakst, a cancer survivor at 22, who is a first-timer; Pam Rickard, a 45-year-old mother of three from Virginia, who is a recovering alcoholic; and 65-year-old Tucker Andersen, who has run the race every year since 1976.

Enlivening the history of the New York City Marathon with stories of such legends as the late Fred Lebow, the race's charismatic founder, and nine-time champion Grete Waitz, A Race Like No Other provides a curbside seat to the drama of the first Sunday in November. Feel the anxiety at the start in Staten Island. Listen to gospel choirs in Brooklyn and the accordion in Queens. Bask in the delirious sound tunnel of Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hit The Wall in the Bronx. And overcome agony in the last hilly miles before arriving in Central Park—exhausted yet exhilarated—at the finish line.

Editorial Reviews

Best Health Magazine
“This book brings the race alive, detailing the running of the 2007 Marathon through the stories of the runners themselves...You won’t stop reading ‘til they’ve crossed the finish line.”
Booklist (starred review)
“Robbins, who covers sports for the New York Times, offers a vivid, winning portrait of the New York City Marathon, now the largest in the world with nearly 40,000 participants. Taking the 2007 race mile by mile, Robbins profiles each of the principal elite runners, including their training regimens and personal stories; describes each mile’s particular features; limns a large cast of supporting characters, from an aid-station volunteer to a gospel choir that performs inspirational music for the marathoners on the eighth mile; and gives an good overview of how the event is organized. Along the way, Robbins conveys an intimate sense of the physical demands the race places on the body, all the while building suspense-though we know the winners-that’s the equal of a good action movie. A quality piece of journalism from start to finish.””
More Reviews (10) Fewer Reviews
BookPage
“An engrossing, edifying and moving chronicle of a day in the life of the marathon and its participants.…[Robbins] is a master of her craft: she deftly combines historical fact with creative interpretation, statistics and time-splits with detailed description….A Race Like No Other is a satisfying read for many reasons, not least because Robbins’ writing is fluid and engaging, and she offers an unprecedented inside look at the storied event.”
Boulder Daily Camera
“Whether you have run the New York City Marathon or not, or even any marathon, you will likely be inspired and encouraged by the stories in A Race Like No Other.”
New York Times Book Review
“Robbins, a sportswriter for The New York Times, has packed her book with scrumptious details…If the written word still has any force, then this book could take on talismanic power, like the medal or the Mylar cape that every finisher receives.”
Penthouse
“I found this fabulous history of the New York City Marathon fascinating because Robbins brings to life the incredible pressures runners are under, as well as explaining their training methods and introducing us to their intense rivalries and friendships….Whether you’re a runner or a couch potato, this will make you at the very least want to watch the marathon, armed with a sense of what each and every mile means to the thousands of competitors who run them.”
Sports Illustrated
“Robbins’s absorbing book...finds its stride....A Race Like No Other gets closer to this marathon than an avenue railbird, and it leaves impressions not fleeting, but lasting.”
The Advocate
“If you can’t make the trek from Fort Wadsworth to Central Park, and can’t get there to watch it in person, this new account of the world’s biggest marathon is the next best source of inspiration.”
Benjamin Cheever
Robbins, a sportswriter for The New York Times, has packed her book with scrumptious details…If the written word still has any force, then this book could take on talismanic power, like the medal or the Mylar cape that every finisher receives. It might even become—who knows?—more valuable than a T-shirt, and people will do anything for a T-shirt. Or that's what Fred Lebow said.
—The New York Times
Publishers Weekly

New York Times sportswriter Robbins captures the world's "ultimate marathon," the New York City race. Set during the 2007 marathon, the narrative follows several runners: male and female professional runners with more at stake than prize money (a recovering alcoholic trying to mend her family; a cancer survivor running his first marathon; a 67-year-old grandmother on her 12th New York marathon) as they make their way through the city's five boroughs. Robbins's journalist's eye is thorough as she intersperses stories of wheelchair athletes, volunteers, spectators and even the city workers who paint the course markers. Those who've read Fred Lebow's Inside the World of Big-Time Marathoning or Ron Rubin's book on the New York City marathon, Anything for a T-shirt, will appreciate the varied voices here. Using each mile to structure the 26.2 chapters, Robbins allows readers to experience the event without ever putting on a pair of running shoes. (Oct. 7)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Library Journal

Attorney and freelance journalist Horowitz can brag 100 marathons, and of almost equal importance, an easy, honest, and humble writing style in his first book, which manages to teach without being intrusive. Eighteen years ago, he took up running, never having tried the sport before or even considered it when he was a student. He traces the paths taken and the transformations made by his body, psyche, and soul, and his story reveals with humility what it means to be a runner and how the culture becomes you. His tips and suggestions are insightful and palatable and are instanced by his experience.

With the lyricism and sensibility of a cinematographic poet, Robbins (sportswriter, New York Times) glides through the 26.2 miles of the 2007 New York City Marathon like an Altman or Welles tracking shot. In her montage of human spirit, we sweepingly survey the character of the landscape mile by mile, zooming in to reveal the joy and suffering behind runners' strides, then back out to establish context and associate culture and history. No artifice or schmaltz-this is poetry for runners; pulsing and energizing in its immediacy, and as raw and persistent as its subject. Welcome stylistic departures, both titles are highly recommended for public libraries, where they will inspire readers to lace up their running shoes.
—Ben Malczewski

Kirkus Reviews
A celebratory narrative populated by dozens of characters who plan, run in and observe the annual New York City Marathon. The 26.2-mile race through the streets and parks of all five boroughs began in 1970. In her first book, New York Times sportswriter Robbins reports the most recent one. On November 4, 2007, she writes, "39,265 participants swarmed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, making New York the largest marathon in the world for the fourth year in a row." Most of the entrants will be unfamiliar to readers, with the exception of actress Katie Holmes and cycling champion Lance Armstrong. Some of the participants were serious runners from nations all over the globe; others walked more of the course than they ran; others never intended to stay the course for 26.2 miles. In all categories, a significant percentage were exorcising personal demons. The author skillfully weaves individual runners' dramatic personal sagas throughout the narrative. One of the most interesting portraits captures 45-year-old wife and mother of three Pam Rickard from Rocky Mount, Va. Fourteen months before the race, Rickard completed a 90-day jail sentence for driving while intoxicated. She had been an alcoholic, dangerous to herself and others; the marathon, she hoped, would serve as a sign of her penance and recovery. Robbins unfolds Rickard's and others' efforts mile by mile. Along the way, she describes each neighborhood serving-occasionally unwillingly-the hordes of entrants disrupting its natural rhythms. For non-marathoners, the unusual tour of New York City's five boroughs might be at least as interesting as the runners. Well-reported, though marred by too many main characters and excessive enthusiasmabout the race's healing powers.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780061373138
  • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
  • Publication date: 10/7/2008
  • Pages: 352
  • Product dimensions: 5.40 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.50 (d)

Meet the Author

A sportswriter for seventeen years—the last nine at the New York Times—Liz Robbins has covered marathons, the Olympics, tennis, and the NBA. She lives in New York City and frequents the running trails of Central Park.

Read an Excerpt


A Race Like No Other
26.2 Miles Through the Streets of New York

By Liz Robbins
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2008

Liz Robbins
All right reserved.


ISBN: 9780061373138

Chapter One

Huddled Masses

The Start, Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island

One hundred and forty buses line Midtown Manhattan in the hazy darkness before dawn, idling for a mass evacuation to Staten Island.

As streams of sleepy runners shuffle through the unblinking glare of headlights, they follow instructions spit from the megaphones of men and women wearing orange jackets. This apocalyptic activity might seem unusual—even for New York—were it not the first Sunday in November.

The thirty-eighth running of the New York City Marathon will start in five hours, and Pam Rickard is anxious, holding her husband Tom's hand as she prepares to board her bus. Tom has faithfully accompanied his wife of 21 years from the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the steps of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. The caravan awaits her. When they approach the door to one of the buses, a man lowers his megaphone and looks at Tom.

"This is where you kiss her good-bye," he says sternly. "You're not going any farther."

A lump catches in Pam's throat. She heard those exact words in September 2006 when she walked into the Roanoke County jail to complete her 90-day sentence for driving under the influence ofalcohol, the punishment for her third offense in two years.

Fourteen months later, she is going to run her eighth marathon. It is her first in New York and the first since she became sober. Pam is 45 years old, a 5-foot-6 mother of three daughters with wavy black hair and a perfectly toned runner's body. But the faint wrinkles around her eyes reveal the hard living she fought so long to hide and the new life she is fighting even harder to maintain. Her jaw is taut in determination.

Last year on this very Sunday, she was collecting trash by the side of Virginia Route 581, wearing an orange jumpsuit and hoping no one would recognize her. Today, she wears an orange bib with the number F5079 and revels in her anonymity.

When Pam learned she had won a number from the New York City Marathon lottery back in June, she was humbled by the odds she had beaten. Of the 43,989 U.S. residents who had applied, she was one of 8,157 accepted. She does not want to forsake her second chance.

In New York Harbor, the patron of second chances stands guard, welcoming the world to her shores. As the sun rises in ribbons of rose, gold and orange, marathoners peering out of buses or ferry windows easily spot the Statue of Liberty and her torch, forever lit. A mile away, on the northern tip of Staten Island, the masses of runners are beginning to huddle.

They emerge from an alphabet of origins, from Andorra to Venezuela and from Lake Michigan to Zoo Lake. New York may have been the destination for millions over the centuries, but the city represents only the beginning of a newcomer's journey. Simply arriving is not enough; achieving here is what matters. The soaring skyscrapers, majestic bridges and millions of people lining expansive (and expensive) avenues demand an effort of an equally epic scale.

Today will be no Sunday morning jog.

"Good morning! Welcome to Staten Island! Have a great race!" Mike Poirier shouts from his lawn chair on the concrete stoop of his small Bay Street house. Somnambulant figures step from the shuttle buses that had collected them at the Staten Island Ferry terminal and traipse past him.

When Poirier bought his house nine years ago, the real estate agent neglected to tell him that the biggest event in the city's calendar would pass by his front door every November. Unshaven and wearing his U.S. Army Retired baseball cap, Poirier happily sips the coffee his wife hands him and shouts out the same greetings to waves of runners.

Poirier's house is just outside the grounds of Fort Wadsworth, which sits at the base of the soaring Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. The fort is one of the longest operating military defense strongholds in the country, protecting New York Harbor for nearly 200 years. Officially completed in 1865, it originally housed troops from the Army and then from the Navy until 1994, when the Coast Guard moved into the barracks. Men went off to World War II after training at Fort Wadsworth, and Nike missiles were stocked in hidden batteries throughout its grounds during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, the fort will host people going off to a different kind of battle.

For the better part of five hours, the grounds will turn into a self-sustaining village of approximately 50,000 people—an intricately planned operational marvel populated not only by the runners, but also volunteers, New York Road Runners staff, members of the media, entertainers and law enforcement officials from national and local agencies responsible for the safety and security of the event.

A New York Police Department patrol car escorts the bus that carries Harrie Bakst and his older brother, Rich, from Manhattan to Staten Island. They are part of the caravan of 12 buses carrying Fred's Team members, all running for the charity founded by Fred Lebow, the late founder of the New York City Marathon. Lebow established this team with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1991, when he was being treated at the hospital for brain cancer. When Harrie was younger, he never thought he would run a marathon, much less be treated for cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

Harrie is 22 on race day, but he has always seemed to be an older soul, possessing a seriousness offset by his optimism. Cancer recently inscribed a story on his neck, leaving a violet, 4-inch scar just below the right side of his jaw.



Continues...

Excerpted from A Race Like No Other by Liz Robbins Copyright © 2008 by Liz Robbins. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 29, 2012

    Great book that will inspire me to run strongly!

    I read this really quickly as I found it well written, engaging and successful. I've been running for about 4 years, having started at 40. I liked the way the author approached the race using a cross-section of the race's diversity to include anyrunner types but added suspense telling the stories behind head-to-head matchups of the top runners and chair athletes. By the final chapters, I couldn't put it down!

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.

  • Posted December 13, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Virtually running the New York City Marathon

    The author provided a very lively description on the New York City Marathon, not only details of the route but also the communities and the spectators/supporters along the route. Besides, Liz also built in few stories in within the book, including the stories of elite runners, runners trying to achieve new life through this marathon and some characters who contributed in their own ways to the Marathon. This made the book very interesting to read and also very motivating to the participants to the New York City Marathon.

    I read the book during my preparation to my first NYC Marathon this year, and it made me more appreciative of the race and enjoyed my race.

    Was this review helpful? Yes  NoThank you for your feedback.   Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.
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