Runners: On Your Mark, Get Set, Chill!

If you live on the UWS, whether you run the NYC Marathon or not, you are likely aware of the physical toll the race takes on many participants. It’s not an accident that there’s a medical tent every mile along the marathon course. Friends, relatives or colleagues who take part tend to come home a little worse for wear. On November 3, when this year’s runners reach the end of the 26.2-mile race at West 67th and West Drive, they will undoubtedly fan out en masse again to celebrate in UWS bars and restaurants, triumphant, but often limping or bandaged or worse.

It turns out, though, that more injuries are suffered training for the marathon than in actually running it. In a 2022 study of the NYC Marathon by HSS (Hospital of Special Surgery), “over 16 weeks of training, 40 percent of runners in the study reported an injury, of which 30 (4.1 percent) were serious enough to prevent participation in the marathon. Another 12 runners (16 percent) suffered injuries during or immediately after the race.”

One of the reasons for these alarming statistics is the understandable tendency, of both seasoned and less experienced runners, to push through injury during their training and on race day. Wrong! declares Andrea Kwok, the clinical director of Spear Physical Therapy on West 67th Street. “With just days until the NYC Marathon, runners should be in the taper phase of their training. All of the work to build up speed or distance should be done, and the days leading up to the race are for relative rest and recovery. Even if you hadn’t quite hit the targets you wanted at this point, be it mileage or pace, this is not the time to push,” she says.

Not only would you be risking injury close to race day, says Kwok, “but you also would likely set yourself up to run the marathon with an exhausted body.” Instead, she counsels, prioritize sleep, nutrition, and hydration to get to the starting line feeling strong.

Over the years, Kwok has treated more than a dozen NYC Marathon runners (not to mention more than a thousand other physical therapy patients). Most of that work has involved pre-marathon training injuries.

Besides talking the talk, Kwok walks the walk, er, runs the race. She’s an enthusiastic runner. Readers may well have seen her speeding by in Central Park or Riverside Park. Kwok only started running longer distances in graduate school, when she ran her first half marathon. “I’ve run a few half marathons since then,” she says. When not training for a race, she runs 2-3 times per week, 3-5 miles per run, weather depending. “I consider myself a very recreational runner,” says Kwok, “but it does give me some context for my patients and friends who run more competitively.”

A wee bit of coasting right before races has served Kwok well. “In my experience,’ she says, “the races where I was more forgiving with my training–taking an extra rest day or swapping an easier run when I needed–were my best races.”

Kwok, who grew up on the Jersey Shore in West Long Branch, has a BS degree from Rutgers and a doctorate in physical therapy from the University of Delaware. She has worked at the W. 67th Street Spear clinic for four years and moved to the UWS two and a half years ago. In January, she will be the new clinical director for the large facility Spear is currently constructing on W. 82nd Street and Broadway.

Does Kwok plan to run the NYC Marathon sometime in the future? No such plans, says Kwok. “I’m happy to do that vicariously through my patients and friends.”