The City of New York and New York Road Runners announced late Friday that the 2012 ING NYC Marathon had been canceled.

According to the mayor:

While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division. We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event — even one as meaningful as this — to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to help New York City recover from the storm.

This was definitely a no win situation.  Yes, this race brings a lot of money into NYC.  But it is hard to justify spending money for generators and water for runners in a race when so many residents are still without water and power.

Now if I had been training for 6 mos or more for my first or maybe only NYC marathon, I would have been so disappointed.  It is hard training for 13.1 miles never mind 26.2.  However, it would not have been a good experience with all the negative publicity surrounding the mayor’s call to hold the race.

So it was cancelled.  Unfortunately, many runners had already arrived to run the race.  They had already spent money on trains, gas, flights, hotels, etc.  Too bad, the mayor has not cancelled the race immediately!!

Now on to my own personal misery.

Today’s race was going to be my 2nd 10K but my first real one. The lst 10k race that I ran was  in August when I had not been running more than 3 miles.  For this one, I would have been training and running at least 6 or more miles on the weekend. A 10K PR for sure!

So I showed up to the race in my boot and collected my race packet.  At least I got a long sleeve tech shirt.

Happy Running! How did you feel about the NYC Marathon decision?