A local runner just completed one of the most prestigious marathons in the world.

Patrick Novecosky, who is born in Humboldt and raised in Burr, ran the New York City Marathon on November 4th. 

The training for the New York City Marathon started at the beginning of the 2018 calendar year for Novecosky. "I started running ten miles on Thursdays and five miles on Mondays, just for the heck of it because I love to run. While I was doing that, I noticed I was getting faster. I was being really consistent in my runs.  I was running those 15 miles a week, every week, for several months, and my time was getting faster and I was feeling stronger. So I thought, you know what, I have another marathon in me." said Novecosky.

That's when he decided to choose the New York City Marathon. "I looked at Boston, I looked at Chicago, I looked at New York, and I picked New York because it's the biggest marathon in the world and it's one of the greatest cities in the world. There was something really special and unique about it."

Novecosky, who now resides in Ava Maria, Florida, ramped up his training from there. "I started training in July. Training in Southwest Florida in the summer is no fun," Novecoksy chuckled.  "So I did most of my training before the sun came up."

For a month in the summer, Novecosky came back up to Humboldt to visit his mother, Theresa, and brother, Fred, during a vacation trip through Saskatchewan and Alberta. "I can actually say I trained for the New York City Marathon in Humboldt, Saskatchewan."

The New York City Marathon, one of the largest in the world, has nearly 53,000 participants. The running starts at 8 AM and goes in waves, until about 7 PM when the final participants finish. "The experience was extraordinary, there were over 1,000,000 people lining the street. It starts on Staten Island and you run up the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, which is a two-mile-long bridge that's 400 feet above the water and that's how you start, it was remarkable."

"There is a tradition in New York where all runners put their name on their chest. So for 26 miles you have hundreds of people yelling, 'Hey Partick, Go Patrick.' I usually run with headphones and music, I had to shut it off. I couldn't hear the music because there were so many people lining the streets. So the experience of the people was as extraordinary as the run itself. They call it a 26-mile long block party and that's really what it was." 

Novecosky, who just turned 50 years of age in May of 2018, set a goal of under 5 hours. He finished with a time of 4:59:53.

When asked if the Humboldt and area native would like to return to the New York City Marathon, he said: "Now that I've had four or five days since the marathon, oh yeah, I wanna do it again."