Photo above: Running the first marathon is a true challenge. Kara and Adam Goucher hold hands as she gets ready to head into Tavern on the Green for a post-race news conference. Kara performed beautifully while racing with superstar Paula Radcliffe and 40-year-old wonder Ludmila Petrova.

"The New York City Marathon is our sport's Super Bowl," race director Mary Wittenberg said repeatedly during the weekend.

Big Apple hyperbole aside, the marathon, with 38,377 official starters, takes over this metropolis in spirit and with the myriad skinny bodies jamming the expo, restaurants, and roads of Central Park, where on Saturday room to run was at a premium.

World beaters abound. I rode the elevator in the Sheraton New Yorker with gold medalist Constantina Tomescu-Dita, who excused herself after a modest belch. She travels with her ex-husband and coach, Valeriu Tomescu - don't ask. American marathon record holder Ryan Hall mingled and posed for pictures at the Runner's World party and past winners from New York and Boston ran the streets almost anonymously. By Sunday morning, however, Central Park was nearly deserted; I am told that once the race is in the books, the Park stays nearly barren of runners until the spring. Just like Beach Drive and Rock Creek Park after the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington.

But on race day, more than a million fans lined the roads in New York to watch the competition. All the reporting, however, comes from the landmark Tavern on the Green restaurant in Central Park, where a nice breakfast spread, with plenty of coffee, made the generally prickly members of the press decidedly less so.

Photo above: Paula Radcliffe with her husband Gary (right) after her third calm, winning performance in New York City. A veteran marathon champion with a loving partner, Paula spoke graciously to the media, and thanked everyone in the city for their enthusiastic support.

Big screen TVs with the race feed and leader boards in each of the three rooms gave everyone a reasonable view of the race; virtually no media members but for photographers were outside in the chill and wind. By the end of the 26.2 race, the comfortable indoor media had fallen for the winners and was as eager as any fan to embrace the big names as heroes. New York Road Runners media coordinator Richard Finn felt compelled to admonish the press, who greeted the first set of winners in the interview room with a round of applause.

Much of the prerace focus centered on Kara Goucher, who is coached by three-time race winner Alberto Salazar. Goucher, who ran 5,000 and 10,000 meters in Beijing, put an American face on an international event, a big deal for Americans who barely know (or care) about the foreign invasion. When Goucher ran just behind defending champion and world record holder Paula Radcliffe, from Britain, for the first half, race officials were nearly beside themselves with joy and hope.

Goucher faded but still ran 2:25:53 and finished third to set an American record for a debut marathon. Much was made of her birth in Queens, even though she grew up in Minnesota, and of the macabre fact that her father was killed in New York by a drunk driver in 1972. But ultimately Goucher's performance was good enough to speak for itself.

"We thought under the right conditions I could be competitive and even win," Goucher said. "But I knew that there would be so much learning that came from this first marathon. That's why I said all along, no matter what happened today, this won't be my last marathon. . . . I'll be better prepared next time."

Writers from all over the world typed furiously into a laptop computers with the din of music and cheers from the finish line just outside. Top finishers and celebrities - Brandi Chastain, Zola Budd, Kerri Strug - were paraded into and quickly out of the press room. Almost as quickly as the race started, stories were filed and writers scattered, while thousands of citizen runners were still miles from the finish line.

NYC Marathon