And they’re off!

Please, from this moment on, keep your fingers crossed for the girls! Their starting wave has just been released, and the treacherous New York Marathon course begins with a nasty little trick right from the get-go: the Verrazzano Bridge is, in reality, a very unfriendly incline. Encountering such a climb immediately after the start is hardly fair—it demands a huge amount of energy right away, yet the vast majority of the distance still lies ahead. They’ll need to pace themselves very wisely and avoid going out too fast. Long after the start, they could still hear Frank Sinatra’s "New York, New York"—a send-off played for every starting wave.