Will Leitch, writing for New York Magazine, detailed his experience running the New York Marathon.

Before Sunday, I had never run 26.2 miles in my life. Like many people preparing for their first marathon, I spent months training for the actual race and weeks constructing a perfect playlist for it. This was a meticulous, almost scientific process. For the first few miles, I queued up some chill live sets from the War on Drugs. For the straightaways of Brooklyn: Big Thief. For the grueling inclines of the Queensboro Bridge: a turn to metal, with some propulsive Iron Maiden, Screaming Females, and the Sword. I timed my mix to end with the Detroit Cobras’ “Feel Good,” a song that makes me smile and jump around every time I hear it — even, I theorized, after running for four hours. It would have been a great playlist, if I’d ever gotten the chance to hear it.

A few feet from the marathon’s starting line, there’s a box set up for runners to donate clothing they’ve been wearing to keep warm as they wait for the race to begin. I had on an old beaten-up hoodie I’d brought specifically to discard for this purpose. As we all approached the line, with runners beginning to hop up and down with nervous anticipation, I removed my sweatshirt and tossed it in the box. I then took out my phone, loaded up my Spotify, and realized … I’d just thrown out my headphones with the hoodie. The perfect playlist was all for naught, and I was about to embark on the most difficult physical test of my life in total silence — a man alone with his thoughts, hearing only the steps of his own feet and the ever-increasing gasps and heaves of his own breath.

And it turned out to be the best part of the whole experience. The New York City Marathon is not something to be filtered through one’s apps and siloed into algorithmic personalizations. It is best experienced with open ears, open eyes, and, yeah, I’ll say it: an open heart. To be among the people of New York for four hours is to be carried by them, and I’d have missed so much of it if I’d been enveloped by indie rock and death metal the whole time. To run the marathon is to be transformed, to learn things about yourself and the world around you that you couldn’t know beforehand. And to do it on the eve of an election that we’ve all, justifiably, spent weeks, months, years gnawing down our fingernails awaiting was therapeutic in all the right ways (and some of the wrong ones).

It’s like nothing I’ve experienced before or anticipate experiencing again.

What a wonderful write up. Read the whole thing.