Marty Granoff is 90 years old, and in four days he plans to run 26.2 miles through all five boroughs of New York City. It will be his sixth time tackling the New York City Marathon, but his first since 1983, and he says he once imagined a very different version of this chapter of his life. “I had thought I might be living in an elderly care home,” Granoff said. Instead, he has spent the last 14 months training for Sunday’s race.
Granoff is one of two runners in their 90s expected to take on the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon, according to Spectrum News NY1. He’ll be far from alone on the course: nearly 60,000 runners are expected to participate in this year’s race, per New York Road Runners, which is set to take place Sunday, Nov. 1. The 2026 edition also marks the 50th anniversary of the marathon’s five-borough course, a milestone New York Road Runners is celebrating alongside a push to raise $100 million for its Official Charity Partners.
A Legacy Award and a Lifetime of Giving Back
Beyond his own run, Granoff is set to receive a 2026 NYRR Legacy Award recognizing his contributions to the organization. He's described as a longtime philanthropist, business leader, and advocate for education and the arts, according to runningusa.org. At age 90, he'll also be among the oldest runners participating in this year's race, NYRR notes.
Granoff committed to this marathon in November 2025, nearly a year before race day, and immediately began building a training routine. He walked at least seven miles a day, seven days a week, starting that month, per Spectrum News NY1's reporting, and over the course of his preparation logged more than 2,500 miles. His long runs eventually built up to a peak of 23 miles in a single outing — a distance that exceeds what local elite runners typically peak at, around 22 miles, before race day.
Training a 90-Year-Old for the First Time
Guiding that buildup has been coach Sean Fortune, who says he programmed Granoff's training the same way he does for his other clients. “He had never trained anyone in their 90s before,” the station reports, and Fortune has said Granoff is not constrained by his age. The hardest part of the job, according to Fortune, hasn't been pushing Granoff harder — it's been getting him to rest.
On race day, Granoff will rely on a professional marathon runner to pace him, aiming to hold around 17 minutes and 30 seconds per mile. He won't be running alone in a more personal sense, either: three generations of his family are set to join him on the course, and he says he's especially excited to run alongside his son and grandson. Granoff has summed up his approach to the 26.2 miles with a simple motto: finish, finish, finish. He's also said mindset is a large part of his preparation, adding that he loves living life.
How Granoff Stacks Up Against Marathon History
Granoff would join a short list of nonagenarians to complete the race. Since 2014, the New York City Marathon has had only one finisher aged 90 or older, per the station's reporting. Last year, 91-year-old Koichi Kitabatake of Japan finished the 2025 race in about seven hours and 25 minutes, officially clocked at 7:25:13 as the oldest male finisher, according to New York Road Runners.
The overall record for oldest finisher belongs to Josef Galia of Germany, who became the oldest person to complete the New York City Marathon at age 93 in 1991, according to The New York Times. Two years earlier, in 1989, Galia had set the course record for runners 90 and older, finishing in six hours, 43 minutes and 29 seconds.
A Race Built on Record Numbers
Granoff will be competing in a field that has grown in recent years. The 2025 TCS New York City Marathon drew 59,226 finishers, breaking the world record for the largest marathon ever for the second consecutive year, NYRR reported. That topped the 2024 race's 55,646 finishers, according to Runner's World. Last year's finishers included 31,927 men, 27,156 women and 143 nonbinary runners, and they averaged a finishing time of four hours, 32 minutes and 25 seconds, per amNY.
Whatever happens on the course Sunday, Granoff's journey back to the marathon after more than four decades away is itself the story: a 90-year-old who feared he'd spend these years in a care facility instead spent the past 14 months preparing for the race, including walking miles every day since November 2025, building toward a finish line he once thought he'd never chase again.
