Hero marathoners a part of NYRRs Team Inspire…
When Dave Obelkevich ran the New York City Marathon through all 5 boroughs in 1976, Staten Island felt like uncharted territory. The race was increasing past Central Park for the first time, bringing runners into neighborhoods and crowds Obelkevich had never skilled.
He had no concept he’d still be operating it 50 years later.
Now 83, Obelkevich has endured a damaged rib he continued operating with after a biking crash, emergency surgical procedure for a leg-threatening aneurysm and, more just lately, unexplained stability points.
Yet on November 1, he’ll return to Staten Island hoping to full his fiftieth NYC Marathon and lengthen a streak no one else can match: He’s accomplished every five-borough version held since 1976, with the race itself canceled in 2012 and 2020.
Dave Obelkevich is the only individual to full every New York City Marathon since the route was expanded to all 5 boroughs in 1976. The Washington Post via Getty Images
“A November without the race is inconceivable,” the Upper West Sider told The Post, his quickest time in 1982 when he ran it in 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Fifty years after his first five-borough marathon, Obelkevich has been chosen as one of 26 runners (one runner for every marathon mile) for New York Road Runners (NYRR) Team Inspire, which acknowledges some of the most compelling personal tales in this 12 months’s race. His fellow honorees are operating for misplaced family members, returning to a metropolis that modified their lives or tackling challenges they once thought unattainable.
Obelkevich is keen to take part in this Sunday’s race. The Washington Post via Getty Images
The retired music trainer’s spectacular streak spans the marathon’s transformation from a modest Central Park race to a global phenomenon. When the race debuted in 1970, entry price $1, and just 55 runners completed a course of more than 4 laps around the park.
Six years later, operating pioneer Ted Corbitt helped launch a five-borough route as part of the nation’s Bicentennial celebration. Intended as a one-time event, the October 24, 1976, race drew 2,090 entrants and 1,549 finishers.
The marathon’s growth was swift.
Last 12 months’s race topped 59,000 finishers, while more than 240,000 people from over 160 nations utilized for the 2026 drawing. Only around 1% received in through the lottery, though runners can also qualify or secure entries through other routes.
Obelkevich shall be taking issues a bit slower this 12 months, primarily strolling the race. The Washington Post via Getty Images
Obelkevich, who has accomplished 115 marathons and more than 200 ultramarathons across the nation, said the most important change he’s witnessed is “the dramatic increase in the number of women competitors.”
Just 62 girls completed in 1976, in contrast with more than 27,000 last 12 months, Rob Simmelkjaer, CEO of NYRR, the nonprofit producer of the NYC Marathon, told The Post. Meanwhile, neighborhoods that barely observed the marathon in its early five-borough years now prove in droves to cheer.
But one factor hasn’t modified: the willpower that retains runners coming back, and the assist that carries them through.
Obelkevich is aware of that willpower firsthand. In 1997, he broke his ribs just two weeks before the marathon. Rather than sit it out, he adjusted his tempo and completed in an spectacular 4 hours, 9 minutes. The stakes have been far greater in 2020, when a popliteal aneurysm threatened his leg and required emergency surgical procedure, adopted by months of bodily therapy.
He ultimately returned to operating, though his relationship with the marathon had modified.
“After the injury, I was no longer able to train at the same level, I had to slow down, and the race started taking much longer,” he said. “So, each finish is sweeter.”
Obelkevich with his daughter and information Maria T. Finch on the bus to last 12 months’s marathon. Courtesy of Dave Obelkevich
Obelkevich started competing as an athlete with a incapacity in 2023, after developing stability issues whose trigger stays unknown. His stepdaughter, Maria T. Finch, ran her first two NYC Marathons alongside him in 2003 and 2005. Since 2024, she has served as his information and will return in that position this Sunday, when he’ll be taking issues slower, strolling the five-borough route, hoping to full it within eight hours.
“It would take a major catastrophe to prevent me from participating,” he joked in a 2016 interview. Nearly a decade later, he’s still proving it.
For Julianna Mangano, the marathon carries a different variety of household connection — one rooted in loss fairly than a operating custom.
The 26-year-old’s ties to the marathon’s beginning borough go back generations. Her grandparents settled on Staten Island’s North Shore after immigrating from Italy, just blocks from where the marathon now begins. Growing up, she spent Friday nights enjoying video games and Sundays around the dinner desk with cousins who felt like siblings.
Julianna Mangano, 26, shall be operating this 12 months’s race in honor of her late cousin. Courtesy New York Road Runners
Among them was Bernard Frank Veneziano, her cousin and best good friend, whom she remembers as charismatic, athletic and deeply devoted to his household. But in November 2020, Bernard, then 23, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a routine night run and never made it home.
Just 20 when Bernard died, Mangano laced up her sneakers within days of saying goodbye and went for a run of her own. She recalled one of his favourite sayings about life’s unpredictability — “You never really know what’s going to happen, that’s the beauty of it all” — and discovered herself returning to operating as a manner to keep him close.
This November, she’ll run her first marathon on the five-borough course in Bernard’s honor, hoping “to finish the run that he never got to finish.”
“No run, finish line, or medal could encapsulate who he was to his core,” Mangano told The Post, “but the hustler in him would have loved this chapter.”
“Every hardship, success, and failure will be emotional to relive once I wear that medal for the both of us,” she said. Courtesy New York Road Runners
On race day, she’ll head toward the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge with her household’s assist, anticipating the start of her journey to really feel “bittersweet.”
“Every hardship, success, and failure will be emotional to relive once I wear that medal for the both of us,” she said.
For some runners, the marathon is a manner to honor somebody they’ve misplaced. For others, it gives a likelihood to return to a place that has stayed with them for a long time.
Dennis LeVasseur, 65, a retired Massachusetts deputy fire chief, first got here to New York with Massachusetts Task Force 1 following the terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001. As the group arrived, he remembers seeing indicators studying “NYC Is Closed,” adopted by a panorama at Ground Zero he has never forgotten.
“I will never forget seeing nothing but gray dust and twisted steel,” he told The Post.
Dennis LeVasseur, 65, is a retired Massachusetts fire chief who got here to the town with Massachusetts Task Force 1 following the terrorist assaults of September 11, 2001. Courtesy New York Road Runners
LeVasseur’s operating historical past predates his deployment to New York. He ran his first marathon in Boston in the mid-Nineties, as an unofficial personal problem. This Sunday’s race shall be his twelfth marathon general, but his first in New York.
Since this 12 months marks the twenty fifth anniversary of 9/11, he needed to discover a significant manner to honor those misplaced, finally deciding to take on the race while raising money for the Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
“When I’m tired, struggling, and still have miles ahead of me, I ask God and the guys whose names I carry to remind me why I’m out there and to give me the strength to finish that day’s training,” he said.
LeVasseur with his fellow firefighters. Courtesy New York Road Runners
Although LeVasseur and his spouse, Patty, have visited Manhattan many instances since the assaults, he’s keen to expertise the town from a different perspective.
“When I came to New York 25 years ago in the aftermath of 9/11, the city was essentially closed. The streets were empty, with no people or vehicles,” he said. “To return now and experience an estimated two million spectators cheering along the marathon route will be an incredible and emotional experience.”
LeVasseur arrived in NYC shortly after the 9/11 terrorist assaults. Courtesy New York Road Runners
For Jaclyn “Jackie” Corin, service has taken a different kind. A survivor of the 2018 Parkland faculty taking pictures and co-founder of March For Our Lives, Corin has spent a lot of her grownup life advocating against gun violence.
Corin took up operating while incomes her grasp’s degree in public coverage at Oxford. In 2024, she and a few classmates signed up for a half marathon in Barcelona, discovering a sport that provided a uncommon escape from the extraordinary calls for of her work.
Jaclyn “Jackie” Corin, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland faculty taking pictures and co-founder of March For Our Lives, who has advocated against gun violence. Courtesy New York Road Runners
This 12 months, she’ll run with 10 teammates from March For Our Lives, one of the NYC Marathon’s official charity companions.
Corin grew up in Parkland, Florida, but her late father was a New Yorker through and through — a loyal Giants fan who never misplaced his connection to the town. Even now, she finds reminders of him whenever she returns. This November, she’ll expertise all 5 boroughs in a single day, wishing he could possibly be there to see it.
Jaclyn Corin speaks onstage at March For Our Lives in Washington, in March 2018. Getty Images for March For Our Lives
“This is definitely one of those things I wish he were here for,” Corin said, “and I know I’ll be thinking about him a lot on race day.”
“I don’t really care what the clock says when I finish,” she said. “I just want to look around, enjoy the absurdity of running 26.2 miles through New York City, and remember the day.”
The 2026 New York Road Runners (NYRR) Team Inspire:
Dave Obelkevich
Fred Abramowitz
Jeffrey Abramowitz
Shaunta-Maé Alexander
Giles Ashton-Roberts
Shaden Awad
Mildred Baker
Hanna Born
Laura Britt
Jackie Corin
Danish Hussain Yar
Alan Kaufman
Krista-Jean Kelly
Dennis Levasseur
Sheena Lawrick, Laura Lang, Sherie Buell
Vanessa Lindley
Julianna Mangano
Brianna Messina
Griffin Oleynick
Caleb Prewitt
Smita Rajgopal
Giovanni Kyle Sabio
Sarah Sleva
Kyle Stepp
Jesús Trejo
Nicole Ver Kuilen
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