New York City Marathon on as scheduled, despite Sandy

Despite Hurricane Tropical Storm Post-Tropical Storm Sandy pummeling the Eastern seaboard on Monday, with a heavy focus on New York City resulting in evacuations, flooding and widespread power outages, the NYC Marathon is still on scheduled, race director Mary Wittenberg said on Monday.

"From an operations schedule, we remain extremely confident that we're going to have an amazing weekend," Wittenberg said in a teleconference on Monday. "There's no anticipation of any change to opening ceremonies [on Friday night], the time frame for the Dash [to the Finish Line 5K] or the marathon."

Wittenberg's comments came before the storm really started impacting the city on Monday night, with the worst still expected to hit on Tuesday. There were numerous reports Monday evening of Subway stations flooding and major repair work needed.

"We absolutely have the room in the schedule to have two days, three days, of greatly modified and reduced activity."

The site of the race expo and bib pick-up, the Javits Center, is in Zone A, which is under a mandatory evacuation. If it is not ready to handle runners Thursday morning at 10 a.m., when the expo is set to open, Wittenberg said "we'll find ways that people can pick up numbers much later than 5 p.m. Saturday afternoon."

For the most part, everything is on as scheduled for now, save for one major change: the New York Road Runners will extend the deadline that runners may defer their entry to 2013 in an effort to help those who are waiting to decide if travel is safe, or even possible. Originally scheduled for Oct. 31, deferrals will now be accepted until Saturday.