New Yorkers bring out the best in NYC Marathon runners

It's a long story, explaining why the New York City Marathon has more in common with New York than with marathons in general. This one is just different. Different crowds, different noises, different quirks. Even the surprises are different. The wind was extraordinary Sunday.

You got a problem with that?

Even on calm days, the five-borough course is not considered a fast one in marathon circles. It has hills, it has some tight turns, it has bridges. But no one comes to New York City for the calm. The appeal of this marathon is the appeal of the city: the larger-than-life character, the gritty fabric that made the marathon the subject of a "Seinfeld" episode, the relentless sounds.

"The crowd is phenomenal. They started on the [Verrazano] bridge, 'Go Meb go!' I said I can't get too excited here," said Meb Keflezighi of San Diego, who won the New York City Marathon in 2009 and Boston Marathon this year. He finished fourth yesterday. "The crowd helped me out at the end, to catch a couple people."

For one day, thousands of competitors get to feel the way New Yorkers feel every day: Be ready for anything.

In the case of Tatyana McFadden, that involved coping with having fallen out of her wheelchair down the stretch. "That was my fault. It was coming into the turn before the climb, right before the finish. It's a very tight turn," she said. "I just took the wrong line. It was quite embarrassing, but I owned it at that moment, and I just got back in and took one look behind me to make sure the girls didn't catch me."

They didn't, bringing her third New York City Marathon women's division wheelchair title and continuing a lifelong pattern of being ready for anything. She was born 25 years ago in Russia with spina bifida, abandoned to an orphanage and not expected to live more than a few weeks. She was adopted by a touring American health department official and grew up in Maryland.

Not only is she the most dominant athlete "in any sport," in the opinion of men's wheelchair division champion Kurt Fearnley, she took up cross-country skiing and competed in the Paralympics in Sochi. Competing in front of her birth parents and her adoptive parents, she took a silver medal. "That was just the cherry on the top," said McFadden, who attends the University of Illinois but at heart is a New Yorker.

The beauty of this event is that New Yorkers come out -- more than a million strong -- to witness a spectacle. Yet they are the ones who make it a spectacle. "It's the amount of diversity, by far. You don't see it anywhere else. Regardless of race, color and creed, they're high-fiving you," said Chris Chung, 25, of Holbrook, who entered as a late replacement for his father, Donald, an administrator at South Side High School who has run 25 marathons but had to pull out this year because of stomach surgery. His son said he thought of his dad "every time I felt wind, every time I felt, 'I can't keep doing this.' ''

Oddly, this New York City Marathon offered almost no tailwind. Deena Kastor, an American who finished 11th in the women's race, said, "It kind of swirled around." In New York sports terms, the course was like Shea Stadium.

It didn't matter. The city was a warm place Sunday, even for runners who weren't winners. Kara Goucher, a Queens native and two-time Olympian whose 2:25:53 in 2008 was the fastest ever by an American woman in New York, was emotional in admitting she "just really hit the wall for the first time in my career." She was 14th in 2:37:03.

But the wall was no match for New Yorkers. "Every time I felt I couldn't go any more," she said, her eyes filling with tears, "someone would cheer."