They were born to run: Three Lehigh Valley locals take on the mecca of marathoning – lehighvalleylive.com

Jessica Schocker-Zolotsky recalled how quiet the bridge was.

Craig Neiman concurred: “You can hear yourself breathing, the person next to you breathing. You can hear your feet hitting the ground.”

Schocker-Zolotsky said she’d been warned ahead of time about this bridge, and the isolation it brings. But here’s the thing about bridges: they have to end somewhere. “You can feel the anticipation because you know what’s coming next,” Kit Fox said. “It’s the quiet before the storm.”

As the Queensboro Bridge ceases, so does the quiet. And then comes the proverbial storm in the form of thousands of spectators roaring as they wait in Manhattan.

Waiting to welcome runners to the 16th mile of the TCS New York City Marathon.

The 26.2-mile behemoth took place on Nov. 3, taking 53,629 total finishers through all five boroughs of the Big Apple. Four waves of runners took off from the starting line, which is at the northeast tip of Staten Island, right at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. From there, the marathoners run up through Brooklyn into Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge to Manhattan, and then up to The Bronx briefly before coming back down into Central Park, where the finish line awaits.

It’s a grueling race, but a rewarding one, as three Lehigh Valley residents discovered. Schocker-Zolotsky, Neiman and Fox took on the mecca of marathoning, each for the first time.

For the 37-year-old Schocker-Zolotsky, a Doctor of Philosophy and professor of social studies education and women’s studies at Penn State Berks, NYC was her first-ever marathon, making the race that much more meaningful. Schocker-Zolotsky isn’t new to the long-distance running, having run her first half-marathon at 22, and she looked to the sport to get back in shape after having a baby four years ago.

When her daughter was about 2 and a half, she decided to fully recommit to running seriously. She hired coach Garard Pescatore and took on a few half-marathons (which is typically her distance of choice): the St. Luke’s Half Marathon (twice), the Reading Hospital Road Run and Philadelphia’s Rock’n’Roll Half Marathon. After setting a personal record in April running St. Luke’s, she decided that she was ready and eager for all 26.2 miles.

The tricky part of the New York City Marathon is actually getting to run it. Most people have to qualify or get picked in a drawing, but you can also be nominated by someone involved in the race. Through her sister-in-law’s colleague, Schocker-Zolotsky was able to secure one of those nominations and take advantage of the opportunity to make NYC her first marathon.

Bethlehem resident Neiman, 45, and Emmaus resident Fox, 27, have both run marathons before (seven each, to be exact), but this one was certainly high on the bucket list.

Neiman considered the race exactly that: a bucket list item. He came into the year, his 30th year of running competitively, planning to run the Boston Marathon, having qualified for that race with the 2018 Martha’s Vineyard Marathon.

“I realized my qualifying time for that also qualified me for New York,” said Neiman, the business manager for the Brandywine Heights Area School District. He needed a 3:05 to qualify for New York at his age, and he finished Martha’s Vineyard in 3:02. “New York was on the bucket list, and being my 30th year of running, the fact that I could do both was really, really neat.”

Fox may have the most unique path to the race of all three. As the special projects and membership editor for a trio of magazines, Runner’s World, Popular Mechanics and Bicycling, he has had the opportunity to cover the race multiple times. So he was plenty familiar with the atmosphere.

“It’s the biggest running party there is,” he said. “Every year that I would go and write, I’d always just get this little twinge, like ‘I need to be part of this.’ And so I finally got the opportunity this year and I was like, ‘I’m not gonna work during the race, I’m gonna actually run the thing.’”

And moving from the sidelines to the street, Fox, who’s also a newly minted author of a book about, well, a runner finally saw New York from the runners’ perspective.

“I really think that there’s no other experience in the world that comes as close to feeling like a professional athlete,” Fox said. “Some other marathons draw big crowds, but not like this.”

“Everybody told me, ‘put your name on your shirt so that people can cheer for you,” Schocker-Zolotsky said. “I was on the side by the crowds, and I was so overwhelmed. They were screaming my name.”

“I intentionally didn’t wear any headphones or anything because I didn’t want to zone out, I wanted to take it all in,” Fox said.

For most runners, including these three, there are particularly important crowd members that really help kick things into another gear.

“When I saw my family, I was like, ‘I’m going to finish this race,’” Schocker-Zolotsky said. “It was mile 19, and that’s when I feel like I got confidence. I feel like the whole first 19 miles I was doubting myself, and then I saw them, and I was like ‘OK, I got this.’”

She also employed a tactic to make the race special, and to digest the distance easier: she dedicated each mile to someone she loved and thought of them as she ran it. For example, her husband picked mile 21 to be his mile, since she hadn’t trained farther than that. And when she crossed into mile 21, it was like he was there with her.

Seeing his family and girlfriend was part of Fox’s motivation as well. “I planned where I was going to see them — around mile 17 and then mile 24 — so it helps to be like, ‘at the very least, I gotta get there.’” he said.

Neiman said he picked out and waved to his wife and daughters in the crowd at mile 14, but he laughed when he recalled their second interaction at mile 25. “They have a video of me going by, and I just did not acknowledge them at all,” he said, chuckling. At that point in the race, there are so many people in Central Park, and runners are so tired, it’s hard to devote the energy to scanning the crowd. The finish line is so close.

Neither Neiman, Fox nor Schocker-Zolotsky would have made it to the finish line, though, without the hours of training they put in on the streets and trails of the Lehigh Valley. As veteran runners, they all have their favorite spots to get a training session in.

Schocker-Zolotsky does occasional hill workouts, and she’ll warm up at the Allentown Rose Gardens before flooring it up the hills around Muhlenberg College. The Saucon Rail Trail in Center Valley is also a nice, flat 10-kilometer trail. Neiman runs in Hanover Township, typically waking up before the sun to get in a five to seven-mile run. Fox has a multitude of places, including Saucon Rail, but one of his favorites is the D&L Trail system. But he also has a specific stipulation he likes to implement.

“I always want to finish my long runs at a brunch spot,” he said.

But regardless of how they got there, all three knew it was the experience itself that mattered most.

“I gave myself permission to slow down and take in the last mile,” Schocker-Zolotsky said. “It’s beautiful: you’re in Central Park, the crowd is using your name, everyone has signs and the signs are in every language.

“It’s just really special. I felt really lucky.”

Connor Lagore may be reached at clagore@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ConnorLagore. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.