I just registered for the Yonkers Marathon! This will be my very first marathon. It is scheduled for september 29th, at 8 AM, and the course involves running this big circle around the entire city of Yonkers, and a little bit of Hastings-on-Hudson twice(once for the half-marathon). Yes, I will be juggling the entire race.
I didn’t realize just how old the Yonkers Marathon was until recently. It was founded in 1907, making it the second oldest marathon in the U.S, second only to the Boston Marathon. I also didn’t realize how storied it was. The Yonkers Marathon was both a training ground and qualifier for the Olympics! However, after the founding of the New York City Marathon in 1970(as well as other marathons in the area), the Yonkers Marathon started to fade into obscurity, some years attracting just hundreds of runners. Yonkers is on the northern border of New York City.
The course of the Yonkers Marathon is notoriously hilly, and challenging, though not as hilly as it used to be due to several reroutings. I am already familiar with many of these hills, though I haven’t run a significant length of the course. Personally, I prefer a small city/suburban marathon to a big city marathon like the NYC Marathon since I am not fond of large crowds and noise.
Most years I think the Yonkers Marathon gets zero to maybe at most 1 joggler, though I need to do more research on this to verify. Last year it had a little over 1,000 runners for both the full marathon and half marathon.
I also don’t know how many vegan runners(there are plenty of vegan marathon and ultra-marathon runners out there) the Yonkers Marathon usually gets, but its usually not a lot. As far as I know, and this may be the case for the entire world, there are no vegan jogglers who have run entire marathons. Sure there are vegan and vegetarian jugglers, and as I said before vegan marathoners, but no vegan joggler marathoners(if you happen to know of one, please share). Of course, there are plenty of non-vegan jogglers who run marathons out there.
Should I complete this, and I don’t necessarily mean to brag, I may become the world’s first vegan joggler marathoner(though my time will not be that remarkable since I am a slow runner). The fact that it can be done at all shows how silly the notion of vegans being “weak” is.
I have been marathon training for months. So except for regularly going on long runs in very hilly areas to prepare for the beast that is the Yonkers Marathon, I need not do anything significantly different from what I am already doing. Yonkers is so close to me that I regularly run its hilly terrain, so I should be able to handle the hills on race day.
A big thank you to everyone who has been following my training for your kind words and support. If anyone reading this is going to be running the Yonkers Marathon, I look forward to seeing you on september 29th! Let’s hope the weather cools down by then.
AcroTrekker 