There are so many aspects of a marathon that need to come together to have a successful event. It's easy for us to pick things apart during/after the marathon, but most of us don't appreciate how difficult some of these things may actually be to accomplish. But that's not going to stop us from pointing out the problems, so that the future editions of races can hopefully benefit from the feedback and turn them into actual lessons learned. While below is specific to this year's New York City Marathon, they are hardly unique in having some of these problems. And other races very well may have yet additional problems not mentioned below.
Expo:
It's unclear to me just how much has changed over time (my first marathon was NYC 2003), how much is change of perspective (I've now finished 60 marathons, so have seen some form of expo or packet pick-up 60 times), and how much is post-COVID reaction. Back in 2003, I remember the expo being overwhelming in scope with seemingly tons of vendors. This year, it was very sedate with relatively few vendors on hand. Some of that impression may be because I likely went to the expo on Saturday back in 2003 -- with the chaos of a huge number of runners -- whereas this year I went on the first day (Thursday) during the middle of the workday, with so few people there at the time, I was done with bib and t-shirt pick-up less than 2 minutes after walking in the front door of the Jacob Javits Center. And I've been to enough expos that I know exactly what I'm looking at quickly at each of the tables to blow past most of them in short order.
Gear Check:
When I ran NYC in 2003 and 2004, I don't recall them giving ponchos out after the race. It has only been in recent years that I've seen anything about those. Pre-COVID, runners were required to make a choice: either get a poncho post-race or check a gear check bag (and do so on marathon morning). Since NYC Marathon has returned in 2021, the poncho is being provided to all finishers (nice!), and any runner choosing to do gear check is required to drop off a bag at least 1 day in advance, no more marathon morning gear check allowed. I don't understand the rationale behind no longer allowing same day gear check. And there are times when you can't realistically check items a day in advance, since you will need to continue to use them through marathon morning.
Transportation:
This is a huge logistical challenge for point-to-point marathons like New York City and Boston, where the race is responsible for getting the runners out to the start line. Boston only has buses from Boston Commons out to Hopkinton, but making sure that all the drivers know where they're going seems to be a perpetual issue. NYC has even more to handle. Not only is the field over 60% larger (50k+ versus 30k runner), but there are multiple different modes of transport at issue.
Midtown Bus: Runners gather by Bryant Park and the Midtown Library to take a coach bus direct to the runner's village at Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. This is the method that I have always chosen. And one that has always seemed to move very smoothly. While the line snakes around a fair bit, and when there are only a small number of people in line early on it seems silly, the queue is increasingly necessary as time drags on and larger groups of people are in line.
Ferry: This one had huge problems this year, apparently. Having chosen the other option, I don't have first-hand knowledge on this one. Runners need to make their own way (likely from hotels in midtown nearer to the finish line) down to the ferry which is open to the public. Where the Midtown Bus option is only available for runners with bibs to board, anyone who wants to get onto the ferry can do so whenever they want. This potentially keeps some of the runners in Manhattan longer than they might otherwise be there. But the biggest logistical hurdle is making sure that only runners board buses which are staged at the S.I. side of the ferry to drive them the remaining several miles to the runner's village. Apparently this year there were insufficient buses/drivers, and no appreciable presence organizing the arriving runners. And lots of runners arriving well later for the ferry than the times they had originally signed up for - thereby creating a huge backlog. By the reports I've seen, it looks like there were certainly dangerous conditions. Mercifully, no one was hurt, but the stage was set where it would not have been surprising. NYRR needs to figure out how better to handle this.
Runner's Starting Village:
NYC has an enormous challenge with holding 50k runners in place in three different sections (orange, green, and blue - aligning with their respective starting corrals/lines) prior to the race kicking off across 5 successive waves. Generally speaking, in my experience of the race, they do a masterful job of this. Any critiques are minor nits that are relatively easily overcome by the runners. There is plenty for the runners, including food, water, and other goodies. My main nit was not having sufficient signage pointing out where that was located, despite having plenty of signs pointing out where the respective color-coded mini-villages were. I had plenty of time to locate it, and the Info tent knew the information to point me the right way.
There are also LOTS of porta potties throughout the village, to include inside the corrals themselves. The biggest nit on this score is that the corrals are so narrow that it's very hard to discern the line for the porta potties compared to people just standing waiting to proceed to the start line.
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