York athletes compete in the Big Apple
The ING New York City Marathon is one of the world’s premier urban marathon events drawing a combined spectatorship of over 260 million people worldwide, and crossing the finish line in Central Park last Sunday amongst the 37,597 people that took part were four athletes who had travelled hundreds of miles from the substantially older city of York for an unforgettable experience.
Representing the University of York Athletics Club; Mark Henderson, Jonathan Lingham, Adam Griffiths and Paul Roberts all undertook the hugely challenging course in a bid to raise money for Yorkshire Cancer Research. The fund-raising has been a massive success and the four runners expect to have raised in the region of £4000.
The trip was made possible by the University Alumni Fund which helped to pay for travel costs to New York so that nearly all the money raised could go straight to the intended charity.
Running in humid temperatures of up to 20 degrees Celsius and through many of the diverse ethnic and cultural areas of New York, such as Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan, Lingham described it as “one of the best and worst experiences of my life! The enthusiasm and support shown by the crowds was amazing, it all really helped us. We were really surprised by how much support we got, we were not exactly with the elite pack, a lot of people had gone before us but people still cheered us on.”
Henderson was the top finisher of the four with a time of 4 hours and 3 minutes, while Lingham finished in 4 hours 58 minutes; Griffiths in 5 hours 4 minutes; and Roberts in 5 hours and 37 minutes. Considering the hot conditions which undoubtedly slowed them down these were all hugely respectable times.
The winning time in the men’s race was the 2:09:30 put in by Kenya’s world-record holding Paul Tergat who beat defending champion Hendrick Ramaala of South Africa by just a single second in one of the closest New York Marathons for years, with Ramaala falling across the line. In the women’s race the finish was also relatively close with Jelena Prokopcuka of Latvia pipping Kenya’s Susan Chepkemei by just fourteen seconds.
The trip was a massive success and culminated in a dinner event organised by Alumni which saw the four meet up with previous York graduates now living in New York, some amongst the very first to graduate in the early 1960’s.
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