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Drawing And Running The 50th NYC Marathon

Liza Donnelly
6 min readNov 9, 2021

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I love to live draw what I see and feel, and this is what I did last Sunday. After training for months, I took my iPad and got myself down to the Staten Island Ferry early on November 7th to live draw the 50th Anniversary of the NYC Marathon as I ran it.

The day started early, many runners taking the Staten Island Ferry, as I did, to from lower Manhattan to the starting point of the marathon in the outer borough.

After we got off the ferry, we were herded onto buses. A lone, happy man capitalized on the crowd to bring a message to us, and shouted, “ God is keeping watch over NYC!!”

The 20 minute ride took us to marathon “villages,” which are places to wait, each village corresponding to one of five waves. Over the course of the morning, runners take off for the race start in their assigned wave.

This drawing was done on my iPhone

While waiting, people rested, others met new friends and talked with running pals, some meditated, loosened up and quite a few slept. I met a 75 year old German woman who told me she’d run all her life: an inspiration for me. I overheard many foreign languages, and the announcements were all made in English, Spanish, French, Italian and German.

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Liza Donnelly
Liza Donnelly

Written by Liza Donnelly

Visual journalist/writer for New Yorker. Producer/director of documentary Women Laughing. Looking to change world w humor. https://www.womenlaughingfilm.com/

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