A record-shattering field of roughly 60,000 racers hit the streets Sunday for the New York City Marathon, and none faced a sweeter surprise at the finish line than Katrina Holloway, 50, a Delaware teacher who had no idea her students were waiting.
Four high-school track stars from Conrad Schools of Science in Wilmington rolled out of bed at 3 a.m. And made the trip to Manhattan’s First Avenue to ambush the cross country and track coach they adore. Sophia Harrison, 18, led the stealth mission, clutching a poster covered in signatures from every member of the team Holloway guides through grueling seasons.
“She doesn’t know we’re here, but she’s definitely going to spot us,” Harrison said.
The teens had plotted their attack with military precision, planning to scream the very phrases Holloway hurls at them during tough practices.
“We wrote her name real big on this sign, and we’re going to yell all the inspirational things she’s been yelling to us during our Champions season this year,” Harrison shared. “We’re going to yell, ‘Trust your training! Gumption!'”
Holloway’s 26.2-mile trek through the five boroughs doubled as a fundraiser for cystic fibrosis, another thread in the pattern of a teacher who, her students say, never stops showing up for others.
“She’s our English teacher and the coach for all of our running teams. The cross country team. The track team. She inspires us,” Harrison added.
The First Avenue corridor where Holloway’s students gathered has become the marathon’s most raucous party, a sonic boom of relief for runners who have just survived the desolate Queensboro Bridge at Mile 15. That stretch, famously the race’s loneliest, offers nothing but the hollow thud of sneakers on pavement and the creeping ache of accumulated miles. The turn onto Manhattan delivers runners from isolation into a canyon of bars and restaurants where spectators stack shoulder to shoulder.
Alexa Little, 33, of Charlotte, North Carolina, helped paint that stretch pink Sunday, joining roughly 20 family members to scream for Emily Kellog, 29, a runner facing down stage-four breast cancer.
“She trained all through her chemotherapy in order to run here today,” Little said.
Kellog was tackling her first marathon alongside her sister, another debut runner, with an army of loved ones flanking them in matching pink.
“This is her first marathon, and she’s running it with her sister who’s also running for the first time. The whole family will be here wearing pink about 20 of them. She’s incredibly determined. This is her dream,” Little continued.
Not every cheering section required flesh-and-blood attendance to make an impression. Cristina Fuentes, 29, a physical therapist from the Upper West Side, and her soon-to-be mother-in-law Lane Pandrok, 59, deployed a more surreal weapon: professional print-out heads of Jake Pandrok, 28, mounted on sticks.
“Jake has six family members coming today, three of them from Arizona,” Fuentes said of her fiancé. “They’ve been coming to this spot, it’s kind of like a family spot when anyone runs the marathon in the family. It’s a great spot. And the [print-out] heads are just funny, and they work!”
Jake’s squad wore matching shirts reading “Run Jake, Run! New York Marathon 2026,” blending into the wall of noise greeting competitors staggering off the Queensboro Bridge.
“This spot is also great because the energy from the runners coming off the bridge right here is just incredible,” Fuentes noted.
After drinking in the First Avenue frenzy, the field pressed north to The Bronx before the final descent into Central Park, where the race’s brutal last miles await.