Why The Hamptons Marathon Is Going To Get Big

Just a few years ago, in 2007, the organizers of the Hamptons Marathon got together with 500 runners and ran a 26 mile race throughout the East End. And just like that, Amanda Moszkowski and Diane Weinberger invented the Hamptons Marathon. 

Since then the Hamptons Marathon has gone largely unnoticed. It certainly gets a few hundred runners every year, but it has yet to turn into the community wide event that well known marathons are, where people stand on the side lines the whole way, playing music, dressing up in costumes and screaming people’s names.

In 2005, I personally ran the Boston Marathon as sort of a goodbye to the city and as a personal recognition to my senior year of college at Northeastern.

It was awesome. Marathons, in general, are freaking awesome.

Fighter jets flew overhead before the race started. The entire city shut down. People from all over the world participated, and the entire run I met over a dozen people, all of whom were running for some sort of personal or mental cause. Why were they doing it? They didn’t really know, and it didn’t really matter, all they knew it was something that they had to do and everybody shares that bond while they run.

I’m hoping that this will be the big break through year for the Hamptons Marathon, sort of like what happened to the Hamptons International Film Festival. It really wasn’t that long ago when the Hamptons International Film Festival was literally a bunch of college kids showing off a few movies in East Hampton. If Alec Baldwin even sneezed the word Hamptons Film Festival, it was considered a success. In fact, when the Film Festival first started, it was sort of pathetic. I can remember being in high school when it first started and watching a movie out on East Hampton High School’s Football practice field and being annoyed because during that week, we weren’t able to practice on our field and had to practice on the game field. Maybe 300 people showed up to watch some of the worst movies, outside in the cold, on a crummy high school Football practice field.

Today, HIFF it is one of the biggest and most respected film festivals in the whole country.

Good ideas grow.

And I think that this is what is going to happen to the Hamptons Marathon. Every year so far, it has gotten bigger and more organized and has become more recognized as another fantastic event to do on the East End of Long Island. This year, Broadway stars in the show “Spiderman” will be running, and I’m sure that more news like that is to follow in the future.