For more than a week they felt pretty miserable, as though they might never be able to run like they once did.
For some, it lasted longer than three weeks. That made for one of the stranger buildups to this weekend’s New York City Marathon, a wicked balancing act between recovery and training, between rest and preparation, between the singular focus that one of the hardest tests in athletics requires and the mental downtime that has to follow it or else it will drive even the best runners in the world completely mad.
That’s what the last 10 or 12 weeks have been like for the handful of runners trying the quadrennial feat of competing in the Olympic marathon in August and then racing in the New York version on the first Sunday in November. It’s the sort of task that can test the confidence of even the best of the best.
“I’m so excited and sometimes I’m worried to see the outcome,” said Hellen Obiri, the defending champion in New York and the bronze medalist in Paris.
Obiri, a Kenyan whose nickname is “Queen Hellen,” should see some familiar faces in the starting area on the Staten Island side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on Sunday morning. American Dakotah Lindwurm, who finished 12th in the Olympic women’s race, will be on the starting line, even though she…
