It's the 2008 ING NYC Marathon!
Today is the ING NYC Marathon, and you can check out the action by cheering alongside the route (see spectator guide here) or watching it on NBC 4 or on the Internet, via Universal Sports, which lets you choose between three feeds (men's, women's and main). There are also a few road closures.
As we mentioned before, for the first time, there's a "wave start," with staggered start times for all entrants: Besides the elite women's race starting at 9:10 a.m. and the elite men's race at 9:40 a.m., the field starts at three times--9:40, 10:00 and 10:20--to help ease congestion. Athletes with disabilities began at 7:30 a.m., wheelchairs start was 8:35 a.m. and handcycles start at 8:55 a.m. You can look up entrants here and track them here.
Mayor Bloomberg, wearing his orange ING NYC Marathon jacket, excitedly rattled off statistics about the marathon--for instance, oldest male and female entrants are 86 and 87 years old (!)--paid tribute to the volunteers, and said that this shows "everybody" from all over the world "coming together." Here are some other fun stats, like 360 porta-Potties, 42,000 Power Bars, and 38,000 runners!
