The Sub-Elite Runner Who Made the N.Y.C. Marathon Podium

It happened at the 2018 Boston Marathon when Sarah Sellers, a nurse anesthetist, running in her second marathon, took second place. To the postrace news conference, she wore the long-sleeve T-shirt that all Boston Marathon participants receive when they pick up their bibs before the race.

Sellers, however, started that race with the elite women. Gebre began Sunday’s race in a separate start, on the other side of the median on the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, because he was not a part of the professional field. He joined the lead pack in Brooklyn, when the runners from the separate starts come together on Fourth Avenue. For his efforts, Gebre collected $40,000. He wore Bib No. 443. He vomited profusely shortly after crossing the finish line.

Gebre moved home to Ethiopia in the spring after one of his brothers died while working on the family farm. Previously he would spend two or three months at a time in New York training with West Side Runners, a club with hundreds of very good, working class, mostly immigrant runners that began out of the West Side Y.M.C.A. 42 years ago. Gebre raced mostly up and down the East Coast.

“I’m surprised that the time was as good as it was,” said Bill Staab, 80, who has run West Side Runners for four decades. Staab often housed African runners in his small Manhattan apartment for weeks and months at a time. He said that changed last month, when his co-op board told him he could no longer have all these visitors. So Gebre stayed with a friend in the Bronx when he arrived last week, then spent the night before the marathon in the hotel room of a professional Ethiopian runner in Manhattan — a room paid for by race organizers.

“Girma is one of the fastest local runners,” said Staab, who credited Gebre’s past months in Ethiopia with his breakthrough performance. “They usually train better there than here because they train at altitude.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/04/sports/Girma-Bekele-Gebre-nyc-marathon.html?emc=rss&partner=rss