ING Marathon: The Run Is On

Tourism to New York City will take a big hit from Sandy. Whether it's as catastrophic as the flooding is anyone's guess but the stakes are high. Halloween will probably go on as planned as most pre-halloween shopping has been done. 

As for this coming weekend, if you are one of the 100,000 applicants to run the ING New York City Marathon, or one of the two million who plan to watch, many of whom will travel here to do so, it makes sense to ponder the situation. 
The good news is that on Monday the New York Road Runners Club said the race is on, and what debris is in Central Park will be cleared by then. 

New York Road Runners president and CEO Mary Wittenberg said that “time is on our side” but race officials are rescheduling pre-race events and hoping to accommodate participants affected by Hurricane Sandy.
Wittenberg, in a media teleconference on Monday afternoon, emphasized that registered runners would be given every opportunity to pick up their bib numbers. If runners can't even get to the city because of airline disruptions they will have to defer their entry to next year. 

“We are going to give everyone the time to get here and if they have to cancel, we will give them the chance to cancel up to Saturday,” Wittenberg said. Runners who can’t get to New York in time for the race will be given automatic entry into the 2013 race. The entry fee for 2012 will not be refunded. 

Organizers also say they expect the ING New York City Marathon Health & Fitness Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center to open on Thursday as scheduled, even though The Javits Center is in an “A Zone” under evacuation orders. 
In the online media world, a source says a lot of New York-based content websites had service disruptions yesterday, including BuzzFeed, the Huffingtonpost, and Gawker, because their hosting company has a big facility in lower manhattan, now under water.

 
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