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Theatre professor runs New York City Marathon

Bial completes first endurance-testing race in hometown

Henry Bial knows New York City well, but he’d never seen it like this. The associate professor of theatre completed the New York City Marathon on Nov. 1.

“I definitely saw parts of the city I hadn’t seen before,” said Bial, a New York native. “Plus it’s a different perspective. I thought at one point, ‘Hey, I’m running down First Avenue. I’ll probably never do this again.’ ”

The marathon was Bial’s first. He started running for the health benefits about three years ago. Earlier this year, he set the goal of completing the New York City Marathon. He relished the challenge and was familiar with the marathon from his youth.

“I like the idea of having a goal that is tangible and identifiable when you do it,” he said. “I can recall going out and seeing the runners go by when I was younger. Every year I’d see the race go through Central Park and think, ‘Maybe I should do that.’ ”

Bial found out in June his application to run in the 26.2-mile event had been accepted. He then set about completing a training regimen he found online. He’d run four times a week with the longest runs coming on Saturday mornings. When the fall semester began, he balanced the regimen with his academic schedule, running on days he wasn’t teaching before coming into the office and even finding time to run while traveling for the job.

By September, he’d completed his longest run of the training regimen, 22 miles.

“I ran from my house to Lecompton and back,” he said.

Bial stuck mostly to sidewalks and rural roads after having a few close calls with traffic. Surprisingly, traffic was not a problem when the time came to run in New York, even though he was among more than 43,000 participants.

Runners were staggered in the start times by their skill level. The fastest runners started first and the slowest brought up the end. The course was closed to vehicular traffic.

“It was a lot different than running on 1851 North Diagonal Road in Lecompton,” Bial said with a laugh. “But there was actually less jostling for position than I expected.”

The race course for the 40th marathon took runners through all five New York boroughs, starting in Staten Island, proceeding through Brooklyn, then into Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx before circling and finishing in Manhattan.

Bial finished the race in four hours, six minutes and 12 seconds, good for 17,228th place. He said he’ll continue running but isn’t sure if he’ll tackle another marathon in the near future. He would like to try and break the four-hour mark.

One of his biggest surprises was the crowd of about 40,000 spectators. Many runners wear their names on their shirts so people in the crowd can cheer for them. Bial said he wasn’t comfortable with that idea, so he wore a Jayhawk instead.

“All along the course, people would shout ‘Rock Chalk’ or ‘go Jayhawks,’ ” he said.