Back
When Dave Obelkevich ran the New York City Marathon through all five boroughs in 1976, Staten Island felt like uncharted territory. The race was expanding beyond Central Park for the first time, bringing runners into neighborhoods and crowds Obelkevich had never experienced.
He had no idea he’d still be running it 50 years later.
Now 83, Obelkevich has endured a broken rib he continued running with after a cycling crash, emergency surgery for a leg-threatening aneurysm and, more recently, unexplained balance issues.
Yet on November 1, he’ll return to Staten Island hoping to complete his 50th NYC Marathon and extend a streak no one else can match: He’s completed every five-borough edition held since 1976, with the race itself canceled in 2012 and 2020.
“A November without the race is inconceivable,” the Upper West Sider told The Post, his fastest 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 recognizes some of the most compelling personal stories in this year’s race. His fellow honorees are running for lost loved ones, returning to a city that changed their lives or tackling challenges they once thought impossible.
The retired music teacher’s impressive streak spans the marathon’s transformation from a modest Central Park race to a global phenomenon. When the race debuted in 1970, entry cost $1, and just 55 runners finished a course of more than four laps around the park.
Six years later, running 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 year’s race topped 59,000 finishers, while more than 240,000 people from over 160 countries applied for the 2026 drawing. Only around 1% got in through the lottery, though runners can also qualify or secure entries through other routes.
Obelkevich, who has completed 115 marathons and more than 200 ultramarathons across the country, said the biggest change he’s witnessed is “the dramatic increase in the number of women competitors.”
Just 62 women finished in 1976, compared with more than 27,000 last year, Rob Simmelkjaer, CEO of NYRR, the nonprofit producer of the NYC Marathon, told The Post. Meanwhile, neighborhoods that barely noticed the marathon in its early five-borough years now turn out in droves to cheer.
But one thing hasn’t changed: the determination that keeps runners coming back, and the support that carries them through.
Obelkevich knows that determination firsthand. In 1997, he broke his ribs just two weeks before the marathon. Rather than sit it out, he adjusted his pace and finished in an impressive 4 hours, 9 minutes. The stakes were far higher in 2020, when a popliteal aneurysm threatened his leg and required emergency surgery, followed by months of physical therapy.
He eventually returned to running, though his relationship with the marathon had changed.
“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 began competing as an athlete with a disability in 2023, after developing balance problems whose cause remains 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 guide and will return in that role this Sunday, when he’ll be taking things slower, walking the five-borough route, hoping to complete 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 kind of family connection — one rooted in loss rather than a running tradition.
The 26-year-old’s ties to the marathon’s starting 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 playing games and Sundays around the dinner table with cousins who felt like siblings.
Among them was Bernard Frank Veneziano, her cousin and best friend, whom she remembers as charismatic, athletic and deeply devoted to his family. But in November 2020, Bernard, then 23, suffered a sudden cardiac arrest during a routine evening 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 favorite sayings about life’s unpredictability — “You never really know what’s going to happen, that’s the beauty of it all” — and found herself returning to running as a way 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.”
On race day, she’ll head toward the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge with her family’s support, expecting the start of her journey to 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 way to honor someone they’ve lost. For others, it offers a chance to return to a place that has stayed with them for decades.
Dennis LeVasseur, 65, a retired Massachusetts deputy fire chief, first came to New York with Massachusetts Task Force 1 following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As the team arrived, he remembers seeing signs reading “NYC Is Closed,” followed by a landscape at Ground Zero he has never forgotten.
“I will never forget seeing nothing but gray dust and twisted steel,” he told The Post.
LeVasseur’s running history predates his deployment to New York. He ran his first marathon in Boston in the mid-1990s, as an unofficial personal challenge. This Sunday’s race will be his 12th marathon overall, but his first in New York.
Since this year marks the 25th anniversary of 9/11, he wanted to find a meaningful way to honor those lost, ultimately 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.
Although LeVasseur and his wife, Patty, have visited Manhattan many times since the attacks, he is eager to experience the city 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.”
For Jaclyn “Jackie” Corin, service has taken a different form. A survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting and co-founder of March For Our Lives, Corin has spent much of her adult life advocating against gun violence.
Corin took up running while earning her master’s degree in public policy at Oxford. In 2024, she and a few classmates signed up for a half marathon in Barcelona, discovering a sport that offered a rare escape from the intense demands of her work.
This year, she’ll run with 10 teammates from March For Our Lives, one of the NYC Marathon’s official charity partners.
Corin grew up in Parkland, Florida, but her late father was a New Yorker through and through — a loyal Giants fan who never lost his connection to the city. Even now, she finds reminders of him whenever she returns. This November, she’ll experience all five boroughs in a single day, wishing he could be there to see it.
“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.”
Back
Top
| Privacy Statement Terms of Service Contact |
Refresh
|
All the best breaking news stories from Apex Football Lite. Optimised for feature phones and low end Android devices, Apex Football Lite helps users with legacy devices and poor network connectivity access the latest football news and live scores. Particularly relevant for breaking football news in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.