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!
