New York City boasted near perfect race conditions for the 54th New York City Marathon Sunday. Several standout South Fork runners were among the more than 59,000 athletes hitting the city’s streets under bright blue skies and temperatures in the mid to upper 50s. It was, in short, a runner’s dream.
“The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, in my opinion,” said Vaughan Cutillo, a Montauk Brewing Company co-founder. “The sun was out, basically no wind, and just perfect all day.”
Cutillo, 40, finished the race, his second marathon, in an impressive 3:15:27. He soaked up every second of the spectacular course through the city’s five boroughs. “The first several miles through Brooklyn after cruising down the Verrazzano Bridge were packed with endless energy from thousands of cheering fans,” he said. “Then seeing my wife, Caitlin, and my daughter, Charlotte, at about mile 11 came at the perfect time for a morale boost. The entire day was something I’ll never forget.”
New York is a notoriously hilly marathon and has the reputation of being a difficult place to run a personal best, which runners call a P.B. or P.R. But that wasn’t an issue for Alyssa Bahel. The 27-year-old, who ran track for East Hampton High School, surprised herself with her third personal record of the year. Bahel crossed the finish line in Central Park in 3:06:24, dropping three minutes and 29 seconds off her previous record, which she set in Berlin just six weeks earlier.
“I wasn’t expecting to P.R. in New York, but the downtime after Berlin allowed my body to recover enough,” Bahel said. She hopes to secure sponsorship ahead of her next race — either the Tokyo Marathon in March or the London Marathon in April.
This was the first marathon for 18-year-old Maxim Bellenoue, a co-captain of the East Hampton High School cross-country team, and his mother, Danielle Epstein, a nurse at the school. Bellenoue just made the minimum age cutoff, turning 18 in September. He held an 8:03 pace over the 26.2 miles for a 3:31:03 finish.
“It felt really great until mile 20, where I started to collapse,” Bellenoue said. “I think I could’ve run faster if my last 10k was better, but it really wasn’t about time. To be able to run for charity was just magical.”
The pair raised $14,000 for Fred’s Team, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s run program, named for the marathon’s co-founder Fred Lebow, who was treated for brain cancer at M.S.K. in the 1990s. They chose to support Fred’s Team, in honor of Epstein’s husband and Maxim’s stepdad, a patient of M.S.K. who’s been battling stage 4 esophageal cancer since last year. Danielle Epstein called the race, which she completed in 6:03:18, extraordinary.
“It was the culmination of a huge journey of love and spirit and determination and so much support,” she said. “The crowds were unreal. I high-fived every child I saw. We ran past M.S.K. and high-fived all of our doctors. It will be one of the most extraordinary days of my life.”
Eric Perez, a member of the Hamptons Run Club, also ran his first marathon for charity, raising $3,000 for Team for Kids, which supports New York Road Runners’ free youth and community programs. Perez, who ran track at East Hampton High School and SUNY Oswego, was hoping to break three hours in New York, but started struggling with cramping around mile 14. He managed to keep up an average pace of 7:43 per mile for a strong 3:22:02 finish. He says the marathon was the hardest thing he’s ever done.
“My legs cramped like I’ve never experienced before,” Perez said after the race. “It was a lack of nutrition, I think, and a combination of the hills. Still happy with the results. The crowds helped and the people offering things along the course carried me through.”
Amagansett’s Erik Engstrom, 27, was the top performer of the Hamptons group The Star tracked, besting his 2024 N.Y.C. Marathon finish by just 51 seconds, with a 2:39:02 this year, even though he was under the weather. “I battled a head cold, so I’m full of excuses, but I can’t complain,” Engstrom said. “I hit a wall around mile 23, but held on to try and run better than last year.”
Engstrom was a county cross-country champion at East Hampton High School and frequently tops the leaderboard in local races. He’ll spend the next week resting up and getting rid of that cold before he tries to win the Dock Race in Montauk on Sunday morning.
