The 2014 NYC Marathon was the largest in history with more than 50,000 competing. Demong finished 52nd overall and in the top 15 of Americans racing. It took him 2 hours, 33 minutes and 5 seconds to complete the 26.2-mile course that laced its way from Staten Island through the five boroughs to the finish in Manhattan’s Central Park.

Fred Lebow and Vince Chiappetta founded the New York Marathon in 1970. Held initially entirely in Central Park, 55 men completed race that year. The course was expanded to cover the five boroughs in 1976 with a little over 2,000 entrants; a race won by the then famed Bill Rogers and Miki Gorman in the women’s division.

Three well-known early North Country marathoners who were past participants in the New York City Marathon are veterinarian Dr. Robert Lopez, who ran in more than 65 marathons during his career and was a torch bearer for the 1980 Winter Olympics, liquor store-owner John Chapple and Margo Fish, one of the first women to run in the Boston Marathon.

A characteristic of New York’s race, aside from the number of participants, is the variety of neighborhoods through which it winds and the size of the crowds that line the entire course. Indeed my brother Chris, Dr. Lopez’s son Tom and I would cheer on our North County runners from various vantage places along the route as we zipped from place to place by subway while they slogged along on the streets above.

In New York, Demong faced cold and blustery conditions with winds up to 40 miles an hour, but of course for a person who grew up in the Adirondacks near Saranac Lake, often the coldest spot in the nation, and whose favorite sport combines flying off a ski jump and skate-skiing pell-mell around a winding, hilly course often in sub-zero temperatures while beating the world’s best, such conditions might seem a bit balmy. The course itself, however, was a bit more than he expected.

“Billy, a lot of people have heard about you running in the New York Marathon,” I said.

“Yea, that was a party,” said Demong.

“What inspired that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Demong. “Ever since I ran high school cross country, I always wanted to do a marathon and do it fast, so it seemed like an appropriate goal for this fall. I started from the front of the orange corral, in the front wave. The Kenyans were across the bridge in the blue corral, it’s not just the Kenyans, it’s the 50 or so fastest runners start over on the right side of the bridge and the next 100 or so fastest start on the left side. I started in that group.”

“How did you get into that group, was it because you were an Olympian?”

“I used that card a little bit, but I also had gone out and run a half-marathon in the qualifying time, so I was able to say realistically that I could run under 2:35, which put me in that group.”

“Was this your first full marathon?”

“Yup.”

“You came in 52nd out of over 50,000, 15th out of the Americans, not too shabby.”

“I’m happy.”

“What did you think of the course, did you have any problems?”

“First, New York is way harder a marathon than one might imagine. Those of us from the mountains think that New York City is flat, but it’s really not. I swear almost none of that course was flat; it all went up or down. That was challenging, however mechanically I held up very well. I did train pretty specifically for the last six weeks for the marathon. I was doing three or four serious running workouts a week, but that being said, I did run far faster than my goal pace for much of the race.”

“I felt great despite cold and windy weather. I felt great the whole way. I pushed right to the finish line. The race went by really quickly because there are just so many people along the course cheering. It is like a three million twenty-six mile block party once you get off the bridge.”

“Did you have some support people with you? Friends or family?”

“Nope, just a buddy from Idaho, Sam Krieg. We virtually trained together. Every day we would text each other, ‘Oh, today I ran 20 at a 6:10 pace or whatever.’ Then he would text back and say, ‘OK, that’s great. Tomorrow we should do 10 miles repeats on the track at 5:30’ or something. We’d both go out and do it and text or call and say, ‘OK. I felt great,’ or ‘I felt crappy,’ and ‘My times were this,’ or ‘My times were that.’ We kept each other in check and we started the race together. We were in the first half together. We ended up finishing about two minutes apart. Overall, we basically ran the race together.”

“He ran very well also.”

“Sam ran 2:36. He was 62nd. Sam would have clobbered me, except his brain got in the way a little bit. He coaches a lot of athletes. We had trained to run around 2:36 or 2:38. When the pace started out really fast he freaked out. Sam said, ‘We’re running too fast, we’re running too fast!’ I was like, ‘It’s a race, we gotta go,’ taking on the risk of not being able to keep it up and not finishing or being forced to walk. Around the halfway mark, he decided to fall into our goal pace and I kept running behind the tallest guys I could find in the wind.”

“Smart.”

“We ended up finishing a couple minutes apart, but really it was a complete success for both of us. I finished, I turned to somebody at the finish line, and asked, ‘Do you know where Sam Krieg is?’ and they looked him up and said, ‘He’s going to finish any second’ and he did. We stumbled our way back to the hotel, grabbed our bags, took a shower, headed for Newark, and were back in Utah and Idaho, respectively, within five hours.”

“Oh my god. Do you think your cross-country skiing help you prepare for this event?”

“Absolutely. You are starting out at 90 percent as good as you will ever be as a lead-level endurance athlete, especially cross-country skier. It opens the door in my brain to wonder how fast a marathoner could I be if I trained a lot. To be honest, in my pursuit of athletic excellence I’ve kind of done that, obviously been successful, I’d love to in, maybe a year, go to Chicago and try to run under 2:30, but the illusion of training eight hours a day all year to see how good I can be at a marathon is a little lackluster.”

“I am happy to have had a good marathon. I’d love to do some more. It was a lot of fun. People are going, ‘Oh, you could run an Olympic qualifying time, which is 2:17.’ I could, or I could run 2:25 and hang out with my kid and have a life. I think I am leaning toward the latter.”

“I would think so.”

“It was a ton of fun. New York being my first marathon spoiled me a bit. New York being New York City – I didn’t grow up in New York City, but it has become a bit of a second home. We have relatives there. My wife is from near there. She went to Columbia (University). Running through the city and having a lot of people cheering for me, I swear 10,000 people yelled ‘Go Billy.’ It got me jazzed up. I could see me running a faster marathon, but I can’t imagine one being more fun.”

“Would you consider running in the Lake Placid Ironman?”

“I would only consider doing Ironman if it was in Lake Placid. Let’s be very clear about that. I have no illusions or desire of trying to go to Hawaii. I would do it just because it is in Lake Placid. I have many times failed to win the Monday night triathlon in Placid, so I would love to go back and run Ironman, but only in Lake Placid and only once. I would never do another one.”

“People would love to have you run the Lake Placid Ironman. You’d have all these people from Saranac Lake, Vermontville, Paul Smiths, Placid and all around cheering you on.”

“I would definitely do it for that. I am also going to send you a link to a fundraising site we have to raise money to support Nordic Combined (which lost its USOC funding despite the incredible success of Demong and his fellow team members). I just want people to give 25 bucks. I am setting up matching grants. The more people who give, the more be can raise to support the team. We really need to increase awareness.”

“People often use running in the Lake Placid Ironman as a way of raising money for a cause, in your case, Nordic Combined.”

“That’s an idea.”

To contribute to National Nordic Foundation’s fundraiser for Nordic Combined go to: support.nationalnordicfoundation.org/events/drive-for-25-nordic-combined/e37500.