For about 18 years, American Peter Ciaccia was president of the New York Road Runners (NYRR), which owns and runs the New York City Marathon.
Over the latter years he was also the marathon’s race director.
Now 72, he initiated wave starts for the event, significantly boosting its capacity to 50,000-plus runners.
Known for greeting and thanking every finisher, he also ensured elite runners returned to the finish-line to welcome home the stragglers — ‘‘it turned out to be very inspiring for them’’.
In his time, NYRR ran events every week of the year — ‘‘the smallest is, like, 5000 runners’’— including the Brooklyn Half, now the United States’ largest half marathon, and the New York City half marathon.
It also runs Parkrun-type community runs.
When Ciaccia first visited Queenstown seven years ago, he bumped into US-raised local Parkrun founder/organiser and inveterate marathoner, Chris Seymour, whom he’d met in New York.
He then got to run the Queenstown Gardens event on his recent visit.
‘‘The course is fun, it’s beautiful, I especially like the pine cones area in the forest.’’
A week before he ran the 50km version of the Tarawera ultra-run, near Rotorua — ‘‘a brutal rain fest’’, he says.
He is competing in several more ultra-runs this year including an 80-miler (129km) in Arizona and a 100-miler (161km) in New York.
‘‘I’m just going to keep doing it until I can’t, knock wood.’’
As to what he loves about running, ‘‘it’s the one thing you can get out there and you’re with your thoughts and own feelings, but when you’re with other people, you share the camaraderie’’.
