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NEW YORK, NY - On Sunday over 40,000 people from across around the world will be taking part in the New York City Marathon. We'll be profiling several Westchester runners in the days leading up to the big race.
Among those runners is Caroline Curvan of Ossining. Curvan, 46, will be running her fourth marathon Sunday and her second time running New York after doing it in 2006 as her first marathon. She said she initially started running to stay in shape after having children.
"It was tough," said Curvan, laughing. "I applied for the lottery and got right in. I was expecting it to take a couple of years to get in so I'd have time to train properly. I hadn't really been running before that."
Curvan said she always thought about running the New York Marathon growing up. "I grew up on Central Park West, so I would see the marathon get bigger and bigger each year," Curvan said. "I always thought 'one day maybe I'll run a marathon, and of course it would be New York'."
Curvan, who has lived in Ossining for ten years with her husband and children, has been training with the Taconic Road Runners Club in recent years and ran the Philadelphia Marathon the last two years. This year she followed a custom-made training program called the SMART Program.
"You tell them what you want your goal time to be and how much time you have to train and they craft a program for you," Curvan said. "What's weird is that it didn't have any 20-mile runs but I did a 20-mile run anyway because I didn't believe that plan could work."
Curvan said that first-time marathoners should try to relax before the race. "Try not to get lost in the whole event because its completely overwhelming because there are so many people," Curvan said. "When you get to Staten Island you're all on this island and you're penned in and there are porta-potties everywhere. It's like you're soldiers on the eve of battle."
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