Community Corner

From Malverne Avenue to NYC Marathon

Caroline Brandel, of Malverne, will be running the ING New York City Marathon today.

If you're an early bird and you're reading this over your morning coffee around 8a.m., Caroline Brandel, who hails from Malverne, has already been standing outside for two hours on this crisp November morning. If you slept in till 10:30am, she is now standing on the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge filled with fervent anticipation, and if you just rolled out of bed around noon, (What were you doing last night?) she is running her heart out in the streets of New York City.

Brandel, 22, is participating in an event bigger than the Macy's Day Parade-the ING New York City Marathon. (Click here to track her in real-time on race day.)

"I'm so excited," Brandel told Patch during an interview the night before she would embark on the  26.2-mile course. "I got a good night's sleep last night," she said, prepared for the tossing-and-turning that is common among first-time marathoners.

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Brandel, who grew up in the village of Malverne, has always been an active person, but never an avid distance runner. While attending Our Lady of Lourdes School in Malverne as a child, she participated in several sports through the Catholic Youth Organization, including soccer, swimming, track and basketball. In high school, she ran quite a bit as a member of the Kellenberg soccer and track teams, but it was after she found love that she discovered her passion for running.

"My boyfriend Paul [Szczepaniak] is a runner for Fordham University," said Brandel, who was inspired by her beau to begin pounding the pavement herself about two years ago.

Find out what's happening in Malverne-Lynbrookwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"I started with one to two miles, " she said. "Then, two miles started to get easy."

She added more miles, then more runs and by the summer of 2010 she found herself running five to six times per week, averaging seven miles or more, usually while pushing a stroller. During the week, she spent her days babysitting for a family in Valley Stream in the daytime, and taking classes at night. To squeeze in her runs, she would plop her charge into a stroller around 9a.m., and take the kid for a seven to ten mile ride through Valley Stream and Malverne.

On the weekend, she bumped up her mileage and even ran from her family's home in Malverne to their beach club in Atlantic beach, a 10-mile route. On one occasion over this past summer, she took a bad spill on Hempstead Avenue only a few blocks into her run, but wiped herself off and completed the course to her cabana. She wasn't even training for the marathon at the time.

"My family now likes to joke that if I could do that, then I can run anything," she said.

She only learned that she would be wearing a racing bib in the New York City marathon this year in late August, when she was offered a last-minute entry into the race.  

"I jumped at the offer," she said, knowing that she would only have two months to seriously train and she was about to start graduate school at Columbia University. "It was a once in a lifetime opportunity." 

Brandel found a training program in Runner's World magazine and started following it immediately. At this point, she had started graduate school and was living in New York City, so she did most of her training in Central Park. On the weekends, she'd log her longest runs, completing a 16, 17, 18, and 19-miler, and two 20-mile workouts. These were her longest runs. On weekdays, she made time for her training despite her heavy course load by running in between or before her classes.

"Some days I'd wake up at 5:40a.m. to run in Central Park," she said. "Surprisingly, there are other runners out there that early."

Of all the scenic places she'll traverse in Manhattan on race day, she's most looking forward to seeing the 90th Street entrance to Central Park. "That's where I started all my training runs, and it's just before mile 24."

Cheering her along will be her family, including her parents, Paul and Barbara, still residents of Malverne, brother, Paul, and sister, Laura, and many of her friends, including those she met during her years as a student at Our Lady of Lourdes. 

"The only borough I don't have someone in is Queens," she said laughingly. [Editor's note: On race day her family suprised her by showing up here,too!]

And while she had been getting herself worked up in recent weeks, fretting over her finish time, with only hours left before she crossed the start line, she decided to put those anxieties to bed.

"My friend told me that New York isn't the marathon to get your best time," she said, explaining that the sights, the bridges and the crowds can slow a runner down.

"Tomorrow, it's all about enjoying the experience."

In honor of the New York City Marathon, I've created a route through Malverne that will take you through some of the local streets Brandel trained on. It's approximately 2.62 miles. Click here to view the loop and let me know how your run goes!


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