NYC Marathon Cancelled

As my wife and I were sitting at the Knicks game last night, her phone went wild with text messages and facebook posts asking about the cancellation of the New York City Marathon.  This was the first we had heard of it and were obviously surprised.  As it turns out, it is the only decision that could have been made.  For runners and their families, however, many of whom traveled thousands of miles to get here and spent thousands more dollars to do so, the decision from the NYC mayor's office came a little too late.

Traveling to NYC was really a breeze yesterday.  On time flights and a normal cab ride to mid town.  From the areas I've seen, there is little to remind of the death and destruction that occurred a few short days ago.  The tone at the packet pick up was very odd.  Thousands of runners and volunteers not quite sure what to do and not quite sure that they should be here in the first place.

As we talked to people from the city and surrounding areas, it became clear that although many areas seem to have recovered well, there are still many suffering.  Among those hardest hit are residents of Staten Island, where the race was slated to start.  The mayor promised early in the week that the race would go on and that recovery efforts would not be affected.  As the week progressed, it became obvious that the pace of recovery efforts was slower than expected, and that police, sanitation workers, first responders, etc. would, in fact, have more to do than they could possibly handle.  One gets the sense, too, that the millions of fans who line the streets and cheer for the marathon runners might resent and protest the event instead.  With mounting political pressure and the revelation that the race, instead of uniting and healing the city, had instead divided the city, the mayor's office abruptly cancelled the race.