Early this crisp, autumnal morning, thousands of runners trucked through Brooklyn (and those four other boroughs) as part of the 42nd Annual ING New York City Marathon.
Friends, family members and enthusiastic locals lined up along police barricades, shouted down from apartment windows and screamed various cheers of support from their stoops along the 26.2-mile route, which started in Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, then went across the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to Brooklyn's Fourth Avenue, then to Lafayette Avenue to Bedford Avenue, through Williamsburg, Greenpoint, into Queens and eventually finshed in Central Park in Manhattan.
“Italia! Italia! Vai vai vai!” yelled one woman to a group of handsome foreigners zipping along Fourth Avenue. She didn’t appear to know them; it didn’t appear to matter. They waved back and smiled in acknowledgment.
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Meanwhile, Sarah Rosenberg, a former Park Slope resident, was waiting anxiously and quietly for her twin daughters to pass at Ninth Street.
“I want to hand them both water,” Rosenberg said. “Then we’ll head into Manhattan. They’re pretty fast!”
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Over on Lafayette Avenue, between Classon and Franklin avenues, Ivy and Kevin Pinnock beat on metal garbage cans and lids with their children, acting out a 30-year tradition of urging on runners past the 9-mile mark.
“We don’t know anyone competing. My parents started the ritual and we are carrying it on for them,” Ivy Pinnock said. “In the past, we’ve had accordions, guitars, drums—sometimes 100 people show up to our house. This year, it’s garbage cans. After a few hours of music, brunch is waiting inside and we watch the finish on television.”
Check out the slideshow spotlighting some of the fun along the course.
