There is nothing small about the NYC Marathon

Big numbers will be loose again throughout Gotham's five boroughs Sunday for the 41st running of the New York City Marathon.

Teeming crowds: Up to 43,000 runners expected at the start on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and an estimated two million spectators along the route.

Great distances: Participants in the 26-mile, 385-yard footrace have come from around the world, with 22 nations represented just by the 90 professional athletes who will lead the parade.

Stupendous attention to detail: More than 6,000 volunteers, almost 2,000 portable toilets and roughly 100,000 gallons of bottled water and energy drinks are a mere handful of the working parts marshaled by organizers.

Race officials again will glory in the enormity of it. More than 125,000 people registered for the race; via a lottery and other limiting mechanisms, the number of accepted runners has been kept to a barely manageable but always expanded field.

There were 127 starters at the inaugural New York City Marathon in 1970; the race was staged entirely within Central Park in its first six years. Last year, 44,177 started and 43,660 finished.

Organizers boast a determination "to engage more and more," race director Mary Wittenberg said, which explains the latest marketing slogan - "I'm in, we're in" - meant to embrace spectators, family, sponsors and charities as well as the runners themselves. All while Wittenberg continues to push for larger prize and appearance money to attract the world's elite runners.

SEE PHOTOSNYC Marathon 2009

This year, for the first time, world marathon record-holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia will run in what defending champion Meb Keflezighi, the first American winner in New York in 27 years, called a "stacked field. That's how New York is. New York brings the best in the world, and I'm looking forward to it."

Ethiopia's Derartu Tulu, the women's defending champion, also is entered, and champion American track runner Shalane Flanagan is in her debut marathon. Australia's Kurt Fearnley, winner of the wheelchair division the past four years, is back.

Beyond them, the sweeping, War and Peace vastness is personalized by runner-next-door stories and the usual celebrity presence. This year, TV weatherman Al Roker, former tennis pro Justin Gimelstob and former Giants receiver Amani Toomer are among the bold-face names taking the marathon dare. Plus, of course, Edison Peña, one of the 33 men rescued last month from the collapsed Chilean copper mine.

"It's an interesting mix that tells the full story of the marathon," Wittenberg said. Writ large.