The first time Dave Obelkevich ran in the New York City Marathon, he didn’t know it was happening.
It was 1973, and Obelkevich was on a jog in Central Park when he noticed a bunch of people running with numbered bibs on.
“I thought I could keep up with them,” said Obelkevich, 83. “I didn’t have a number. I didn’t even know there was a race.”
He tagged along for a six-mile loop and had so much fun that he decided to sign up for the marathon the following year. He had no idea then that he would continue running marathons into his ninth decade, or that he would go on to make marathon history.
On Nov. 1, Obelkevich will be running his 50th New York City Marathon. He holds the record for the longest streak and the most finishes of the race. Obelkevich has finished every five-borough marathon that has been held since 1976. (There were two years the race was canceled.)
“He’s pretty normal otherwise,” said his wife, Lyn Dominguez, 85, about her husband’s extreme commitment to marathon running.
More than 50,000 people come from around the world to compete in the New York City Marathon, but fewer than 100 of them are 80 or older this year, according to race organizers.
“As long as I keep moving, I’ll try to keep doing the marathon,” Obelkevich said.
He loves running, including the side benefit that it has been good for his health. Studies have shown that running is helpful for both cognitive and physical well-being, surprisingly including the knees, which are strengthened by movement.
But Obelkevich said that distance running has taught him lessons well beyond the racecourse: If you keep showing up and moving, he said, you might be able to achieve goals you never thought possible.
Obelkevich, a retired high school music teacher, believes that running has changed his personality. He used to be quiet and shy. Now he feels confident walking (or running) up to anyone and engaging them in conversation. Obelkevich has made many of his closest friends while running, and even carries cards with his name and number so he can stay in touch with people he meets along the way. He met his wife through a running group in the early 1980s.
So how has he run 115 marathons and more than 200 ultramarathons?
He leans into the distance, and the energy he gets from the other runners and the cheering crowds.
“I’d rather run a hundred miles than a hundred yards,” he said.
In 1982, Obelkevich ran his fastest New York City Marathon in 2 hours and 40 minutes — averaging around a six-minute mile. In recent years he’s done more walking during the race, and he said he isn’t worried about his time anymore. He just wants to finish.
Obelkevich ran track in high school but said he was never the fastest runner. Before he ran his first full New York City Marathon when he was 31, he had never run more than six miles in a row.
“It was a big challenge, but I had lots of fun,” Obelkevich said. After that first marathon, he started regularly running longer distances with a group and was hooked on the sport.
Then one year, around 15 or 20 years in, he got a call from the New York Road Runners, the group that organizes the marathon.
“They said, ‘You know, you’ve got a streak going.’ And I didn’t know what they were talking about,” Obelkevich said.
But he liked the idea of keeping his marathon streak going.
His stepdaughter Maria T. Finch, 59, said the marathon became a tradition for the whole family. Cheering on Obelkevich is an annual event, and there were a couple of years when her mother and brother ran the race, too. So it didn’t feel like a big deal to Finch when she decided to try it in her mid-30s.
“It was like, ‘Yeah, of course I’m going to do this,’” she said.
Finch was living in Seattle at the time, training in cooler weather. When she arrived in New York for the race in 2003, it was an unseasonably warm day, and she developed severe leg cramps. Even though Obelkevich could have run much faster, he stayed with Finch the whole race.
Around 21 miles into the 26.2-mile course, Finch was struggling and felt like she was failing.
“Dave said to me, ‘Maria, look at all the people around us right now. Everybody feels just as badly as you do,’” Finch said. “It made me feel so much better because I wasn’t alone in it. And I was like, ‘Oh, okay. This is just part of marathoning, and I just keep going.’”
“Keep going” has become a mantra of sorts for Obelkevich.
In 2020, he had a popliteal aneurysm, or bulge, behind one of his knees and went to the hospital in severe pain. He ended up needing emergency surgery. The marathon was canceled that year because of the coronavirus pandemic, and Obelkevich recovered and continued to run. But he began to notice his balance was not as stable. In 2023, he registered as an athlete with a disability, which meant he could run with a guide to assist him when his balance faltered.
Finch offered to be his guide, even though she hadn’t completed a marathon in nearly two decades and was dealing with her own health difficulties.
Finch was recovering from breast cancer at the time and said she was still feeling low-energy, but she was inspired to join Obelkevich on the course again. She started training and has completed the marathon with Obelkevich as his guide the past two years, and plans to do so again on Nov. 1.
Finch said she feels strongly about helping Obelkevich finish the marathon because she knows how important the tradition is for him and her mom.
“I feel so committed to helping them keep this anchor,” Finch said. “With all the different losses that you start to experience in your 80s, to have something like this that’s an annual event that you really just look forward to that has been a part of your life for so long.”
Obelkevich plans to keep finishing the marathon every year for as long as he can.
“It’s hard to start,” he said of running, or any big challenge. “The way to defeat that is, never stop. Just keep moving.”
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The post At 83, he’s training for his 50th NYC Marathon. Here’s what he’s learned. appeared first on Washington Post.
