By Tony C. Dreibus and Mary Childs Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) — Ben Lloyd will run the New York City Marathon tomorrow after a good night’s sleep and a relaxing week. After losing his job as a Barclays Plc loan salesman in August, he says he’s had plenty of time to train properly. “Actually getting to train and sleep is a pretty novel concept,” said Lloyd, 38, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. “After being laid off in August it gave me the perfect opportunity to really focus my training.” About 40,000 people are registered to start the race, the 40th running of the event that makes its way through all five boroughs of a city that’s lost 173,000 jobs since July 2008, including 37,400 at financial companies. The slumping economy hasn’t kept away unemployed people like Lloyd or those who had to travel thousands of miles to attend the event. Only 25 percent of the 26.2-mile (42.2-kilometer) race’s participants are from the New York area, about 10,000 are from other parts of the country and approximately 20,000 are from outside the United States, said Richard Finn, a spokesperson for New York Road Runners , which organizes the annual event. Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong , who overcame cancer and now runs the Lance Armstrong Foundation that raises money to help people with the illness, will run the New York City Marathon after finishing in just under three hours a year ago. After the 2008 race, he said it was “the hardest physical thing” he’d accomplished. A Status Race Lloyd, who sold high-yield loans for Barclays and lost his job as a result of the company’s acquisition of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. 10 months earlier, said the race is appealing because of its status. “The location attracts more than the race itself,” he said. “New York City is a cool place to come, and if you want to do a marathon then why not make it NYC? If you are someone who is going to end up running a lot of marathons then ultimately the New York City Marathon is one of the ones you need to do.” Marathon running has grown in the past two decades as a record 425,000 people finished the distance in 2008, up 3.2 percent from a year earlier, according to data from Running USA , a group that tracks running trends. This year’s marathon is the city’s biggest on record, with about 103,000 applicants, Finn said. “Running serves as something of an anchor in rocky waters,” said Mary Wittenberg , chief executive officer of New York Road Runners and race director of the marathon. “It’s something you can control, something you can go out and spend some time and feel better for it.” Running Shoe Sales The National Sporting Goods Association reported that in 2008 about $2.31 billion was spent on running shoes, up 5.5 percent from a year earlier, according to the Running USA site. The New York race starts in Staten Island, crosses the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Brooklyn before entering Queens. Runners will cross the Queensboro Bridge into Midtown and take First Avenue into the Bronx before heading back into Manhattan, along Fifth Avenue and finishing in Central Park South. The men’s and women’s winners will each receive $130,000, according to the marathon Web site. Second place nets $65,000 and third place will earn $40,000, the site said. If a former winner takes first place, he or she will receive an additional $70,000, Finn said. Last Year’s Record Brazilian Marilson Gomes dos Santos won the men’s race last year in a time of 2:08:43. Paula Radcliffe from the U.K. won the women’s race in 2:23:56. This year’s field will include Kenya’s Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot , winner of the Boston Marathon in 2007 and 2008, and Gomes dos Santos. Among the women vying for this year’s title are Radcliffe and Ludmila Petrova from Russia, last year’s runner-up. Along with the pros, Wall Streeters who are accustomed to setting and achieving goals in high-pressure situations have turned their focus to running as an outlet, according to Wittenberg. “It’s the Mount Everest of running,” she said. “It’s a major goal at a time when high-achieving people who are used to being able to set major goals in their business life might either be living with greatly reduced budgets at work or they might be out of work or stressed about their own job.” Lloyd, who plans to finish the race a few minutes slower than his personal record of 2 hours and 54 minutes because he participated in the Ironman World Championships on Oct. 10, said he’ll enjoy relaxing after the race and not having the pressure of returning to the office on Monday morning. “My triathlon club always has a big gathering post-race at a bar on the Upper East Side,” he said. “So I can enjoy a few beers without the worry of work.” To contact the reporter on this story: Tony C. Dreibus in Chicago at tdreibus@bloomberg.net ; Mary Childs in New York at mchilds4@bloomberg.net
Read more from the original source:
New York Marathon Keeps Working as Unemployed Have More Time to Prepare
