Runners aren’t the only ones with the date of the New York City Marathon circled on their calendars.
For more than two decades, a group of cyclists has taken part in an unofficial, early morning joyride along the closed-off route, indulging in the rare freedom of the unimpeded road each year before the start of the actual footrace.
So it was with great disappointment that they learned this week that the New York Road Runners, the organizers of the marathon, were trying to kick them to the curb.
“Anyone attempting to ride the course ahead of the Marathon — starting in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn — will be diverted and removed by the authorities,” read a statement the organization posted online this week. “We ask that everyone adhere to this restriction.”
Some riders were saddened to lose a beloved yearly ritual. The ride, they said, was something organic in a city where many public events have come to feel overly costly or contrived.
Others were angry, placing the blame on what appeared to be a growing group of riders who pedaled aggressively and treated the event as a time trial, putting the safety of volunteers and pedestrians at risk.
And some were just confused: If they announced a ban on something that had never been allowed in the first place, what would change, exactly?
“It’s a real shame,” said Neile Weissman, a spokesman for the New York Cycle Club, which has organized a large ride on the morning of the marathon for more than two decades. “If it can be done safely and without interfering with the setup, what’s the harm?”
Race volunteers, who fan out across the city early in the morning to set up the course, first raised safety concerns about the cyclists before last year’s race, according to Crystal Howard, the senior vice president of public affairs for the Road Runners.
She added the organization was aware of at least one crash last year where a cyclist hit a pedestrian on the course.
“It is imperative for everyone’s safety — staff, volunteers, vendors and cyclists alike — that all who intended to join this unsanctioned ride stay off the Marathon course ahead of the race,” she said.
Still, the announcement felt like a gut punch of sorts for a community that has often struggled to carve out space on the city’s busy streetscape.
“It’s kind of a free-for-all, but an organized free-for-all,” said Daylen Yang, 29, a software engineer who rode the course in 2021. “We passed by lots of cops, and no one tried to stop us, so it seemed like they were OK with it.”
The history is a bit hazy. But people have been cycling the marathon route since at least the 1990s. In an interview last year, one of those early riders, Peter O’Reilly, recalled being essentially alone on the streets with a small group of friends in 1999. A year later, he led the cycle club’s first group ride on the course.
The bike rides were never sanctioned by the city or the Road Runners, but they seemed to be tolerated. The number of participants swelled with each successive year, largely by word of mouth.
Those gathering last year at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Bay Ridge, the unofficial starting point of the ride, included people on racing bicycles, Dutch-style cruisers, Citi Bikes, skateboards and roller skates. They all went as far as they could before being shepherded off the course, typically around Central Park.
For those who have taken part in the tradition for many years, Tuesday’s news was not necessarily a surprise. Chris Jones, 53, first rode the marathon course in 2011 after hearing about it from other cyclists in Prospect Park. Every year he wondered if he was doing it for the last time, he said.
“Last year, it felt like thousands of people,” said Mr. Jones, who served as a ride leader for Rapha Cycling Club, which brought close to 200 people to the event. “It was easily the biggest I’ve seen in more than a dozen years doing it.”
Mr. Jones posted a sign-up form for the marathon ride on the club’s website last week. Around 30 people promptly signed up, he said. But when he saw the announcement from the Road Runners on Tuesday, he took the page down.
He wondered how many riders would actually heed the command to stay away. For his part, he figured he’d sleep in on marathon morning for the first time in years — probably.
“My wife was asking me this morning if I changed my mind,” he said. “I may change my mind.”
The post New York Marathon Cracks Down on Cyclists’ Pre-Race Joyride appeared first on New York Times.
