Just past the tollbooths on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, on the morning of November 1st, Gary Muhrcke will move up to the starting line of the 40th ING New York City Marathon. Ralph Garfield and Bill Newkirk will step to the line with him. They will be surrounded by a pack of more than 40,000 runners in a mega-race that commands intense global attention for the elite runners, but these three will be in a less-conspicuous category.
They will be certified originals, the men no one dares label as newbies, the men ready for their very special romps down memory lane. They were there at Central Park on Sept. 13, 1970, the day 127 runners answered Fred Lebow's call and showed up to run the first New York City Marathon.
In brutally hot conditions - the mercury reached 85 degrees - all three slogged through to the finish line. Muhrcke led them all, winning that first New York Marathon in 2:31:38. Garfield finished 43rd in 4:07 and Newkirk crossed the line in 4:21.
Just 52 others of the original 127 completed the full 26 miles, 385 yards of the all-Central Park race, which consisted of a single short loop around the "72nd Street Circuit," followed by four full runs around the park's six-mile interior roadway.
And, as far as it's known, Muhrcke, Garfield and Newkirk will be the only three of the 55 original finishers planning to do it again on November 1st.
"I'm hoping to run it around 3:30; I think that would be a very respectable time for me," said Muhrcke. "But then again at my age (70) you never know. As the years go on, you respect that distance more and more. It's unforgiving. Last time I ran New York was 10 years ago, when I did a 3:45. At the time, I didn't know if I'd ever run it again. But now that this is the 40th, and it's such a milestone, I knew I had to come back."
A New York City fireman at the time, he'd worked a full shift through the night of Sept. 12th, and at his wife Jane's urging, drove into the city from their Long Island home to run through the park. On little sleep, he ran a strategic race and surged past Tom Fleming and then Moses Mayfield in the final miles to win it by over four minutes.
Fleming would hold on for second, Mayfield would slip back to eighth. Fleming, then just a 19-year-old freshman at New Jersey's William Paterson College who'd run on the mile relay team at Bloomfield High School, became known for the mega-distances (well over 120 miles a week) he ran in training, but Muhrcke ran perhaps two thirds of that, fitting his running around his fireman's job and his family obligations. And now, on reflection, Muhrcke can say, "the older I get, the more important it is to me what I did that day."
After retirement from the fire department, Muhrcke found a new niche for himself by filling his van with running shoes, driving to races, and selling his stock to fellow racers. The van eventually gave way to his first Super Runners shop, located in their home town of Huntington, Long Island. Now the Muhrcke chain extends to 10 stores spread around the New York Metropolitan area. The 10th of them opened this week at 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas, Manhattan.
Jane Muhrcke retains her own role in the marathon; not as a runner, but as creator of the laurel wreaths presented to each year's male and female winners.
"Fred (Lebow) had come out to our house, and he saw that laurel growing by the side of the road," Muhrcke remembers. "So he got the idea of creating wreaths for the winners, like they did in the ancient Olympics. Jane did the rest and she's been doing it for over 30 years now."
But she can't pinpoint the precise year she created the first winner's wreath. "Let's just say I've been doing it longer than I can remember," she said.
Muhrcke gained later fame as winner of the first Empire State Building Run-Up, and has completed over 150 marathons over the years. He's run NYC "about a dozen times" but his career-best marathon remains the 2:23 he ran, at age 43, at Boston in 1983.
While the bulk of the NYC Marathon field will consist of runners whose approach to the race is a lot less intense than Muhrcke's was in his peak years, it's these same runners who have created the ongoing phenomenon of The Running Boom and keep running shoe sales at lofty levels. All these years later, though, this first NYC Marathon winner isn't just running for fun.
"If I put on a number," he said, "you know I'm planning to run it (at a serious pace) the whole way." Despite his hectic schedule keeping things humming at his 10 stores - and as the marathon approaches these stores are busier than ever - Muhrcke manages to find time for his own training.
"Nothing like I did years ago," he said, "but enough to keep me in reasonable shape."
On many of his morning runs, Ralph Garfield trots by the statue of President James Abram Garfield, a centerpiece of the oceanfront promenade in Long Branch, N.J. The urban myth he confronts on a regular basis is that he is a great-grandson of James Abram Garfield, America's 20th president. The legend forces him into a mode of constant denial. "No, no, no, it can't possibly be true," he tells friends and fellow runners on a regular basis. "It's way-way-way too long a stretch."
His own roots stretch across the Atlantic to England. He was born in the London borough of Hackney 74 years ago and has vivid recollections of childhood survival through the horrors of a city under constant aerial siege during World War II. "I still remember those V-1s, the doodle bugs, the buzzbombs (German rockets) we called them. Once, the engine cut out several hundred feet over a street where we were playing. When the fuel ran out, it just glided in on its short, stubby wings.
"The nose was loaded with high explosives. This particular one, it landed about a quarter of a mile away from where we were. There was a tremendous explosion. It landed in a built-up area, hit a number of houses, and I'm sure killed a lot of people."
When the war ended, a difficult but gradual return to normalcy began and Londoners got the chance to celebrate the rebirth of the Olympic Games in 1948. At age 13, Garfield was able to buy a ticket to the final day of athletics competition at Wembley Stadium and got to see such riveting performances as the U.S. men winning the 4x100 relay (after surviving an early baton-passing mishap) as well as the 4x400 (after a Jamaica team, leading at the time, bowed out when the famed Arthur Wint pulled a hamstring.)
And finally, there were Delfo Cabrera of Argentina and Welshman Tom Richards running 1-2 in the marathon after Etienne Gailly of Belgium entered the stadium first, staggered once and then again, and finally struggled home third. Garfield, sailing over on the Queen Mary, emigrated to the U.S. at age 26 to further his career in the field of actuarial science and it didn't take him long to become a student of the American sports scene.
"It was 1961," he said. "That was the year Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, for me a real summer to remember. I lived in Manhattan at the time, a couple of years on West 71st Street, then moved to 100th Street to what was then called Park West Village. It was just a block off Central Park, so on weekends I'd just go out and run around the reservoir.
"It was just for exercise, as a break from work and homework (he was attending New York University at nights, working on his undergraduate degree.) One day I casually met a man who was jogging as well, and he told me about a cross country race being held the next day at Van Cortlandt Park, and invited me to run it with him."
That man turned out to be fellow New York City Marathon pioneer Bill Newkirk, and they've remained friends all the years since. "That's where the running bug really hit me," said Garfield. "In the spring of 1970, I ran the Yonkers Marathon. I'd joined the New York Road Runners by then and I guess they put out a little newsletter telling people about their new marathon in Central Park, and that's how it happened. I'd run Yonkers in 3:59, but I was really thrilled with my 4:07 in Central Park. There were lots of other people in the park. Bikers, strollers, walkers, etc. We had to share the road. I remember somebody asking me, ‘who are all these crazy people?' Maybe he was right. Maybe we all are somewhat crazy. About running, anyway."
Garfield moved to New Jersey in 1973, later earned masters as well as doctorate degrees, and taught at the New Jersey Institute of Technology for 16 years. He quickly got involved in the Garden State running scene as a member of both Shore Athletic Club and Freehold Area Running Club. He's never stopped going to the races, and now that he's reached septuagenarian status, continues to be a frequent winner in his age division. In the weeks leading into the NYC 2009 marathon, he led all 70-and-up runners in both the Jersey Shore Half Marathon at Sandy Hook and the Seaside Half Marathon in Seaside Heights.
"This will be my seventh New York City Marathon but I'm kind of nervous about this one," he admits. "Basically, I just want to finish it in one piece, standing up. If I have to race walk some of it (he's been an outstanding race walker, as well) that's okay, too. Time is not my goal this time. If I come in under five hours, I'll be thrilled."
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