This year, the race became the world's largest marathon with 55,646 finishers. John Boothman went over with friends and family to take part and here is his account of race day.
A 5.00 am wake up to catch a coach to the start on Staten Island where we had a very long and cold wait of approx. 3 hours.
I met and buddied up with a great guy called Trent who was from Brisbane, Australia and was doing his first marathon. Great to share time and help each other get through the cold wait time. Pictured wrapped in disposable old clothes and bin bags/foil blanket, I didn't move much until the sun came up taking the chill away.
I was in wave 2 thankfully getting going a lot sooner than many others. Trent's wave didn't set off until after 11 making his a very long day.
Once the sun did rise, we were fortunate to have a brilliant day, with the steep and long climb out from Staten over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge providing amazing views and I was lucky to be on the top deck.
Half of the runners are on the lower deck.
Our gang provided brilliant support at a couple of points along the route which was packed with thousands of spectators (apart from the bridges ) which were empty and quiet apart from the sound of feet.
As with most big city marathons, the crowd were super enthusiastic and noisy.
All went very well apart from the last two miles where again I struggled but did hang on to finish very similar time to the last one (York) a couple of weeks ago.
Central Park providing the finish venue and what a fantastic oasis this space is in the middle of a very mad place.
A couple more days in NY sightseeing rounded off a really good trip.