DAVE OBELKEVICH DIDN’T grow up a runner. He was more a music kid, who did chorus, orchestra, and band. But on a whim for his senior year of high school in Johnson City, NY, Obelkevich joined the track club. A few years before, he had completed a mile in under 6 minutes while his brother and best friend finished around the 8-minute mark, so he thought he might do well. He was humbled immediately.
“The coach would say, ‘Okay Dave, you start running around the track. We'll give you a 10-second head start,” Obelkevich tells MH. “They always caught me by the end of the loop.” He never finished dead last, though. Second to last, but never last place.
Obelkevich eventually moved to New York City to attend Columbia University in 1961. But it wasn’t until almost a decade later that he took his first steps to building one of the most notable reputations in the city’s running community. At 83, he’s the only person to participate in and finish every NYC Marathon since the course expanded to all five boroughs in 1976. (Before 1976, the NYC Marathon was four large laps around Central Park). This year, Obelkevich is taking on his 50th consecutive race.
He’ll lace up with custom-made orthotics in his Hoka shoes and an XL lucky shirt his friend Tucker Anderson made for him 15 years ago. The shirt has his name on top followed by big block text: FINISHER EVERY NYC MARATHON. The next line reads “1976-???” “I'll wear a long-sleeve shirt over it so I can take the long-sleeve shirt off,” says Obelkevich. “Unless it's really frigid, I'll run in shorts. If it's below 40, I may have to have my legs covered. But even as I get older and have less fat, it's easier to run with shorts on.” Obelkevich also likes to keep his hands warm and carries gloves with him just in case.
How He Started Running
OBELKEVICH’S METICULOUS PREPARATION for the NYC Marathon is a stark contrast to his first race where he literally wandered on the course. In 1973, Obelkevich was in Central Park and noticed people running with bibs. It was a strange sight to see back then. Running wasn’t as popular as it is today and it was rare to find someone running on a weekday. “Nowadays, whether it’s two in the morning or two in the afternoon, there are always people running in Central Park,” he says.
Dave, along with roughly 17 spectators in the park, stood at 100th Street and Park West Drive, where he watched Tom Fleming (who later won the 1973 marathon) speed down the hill as leader of the pack. He remembers telling himself there was no way he could keep with that guy, even for one loop. But once the 75th person came around, Dave thought maybe it was possible. “Without having a number, it was very low key. Five guys passed me while I was in that loop for 43 minutes and I thought, ‘wow, that’s not bad.’”
The following year, Dave formally signed up for the marathon. His motivation was to see if he could do it and to honor his father, who had passed away earlier that year. Dave ran at 10 minutes a mile, racing down hills with a 16-year-old girl. “In the first three years of the New York City Marathon—1970, ‘71, and ‘72—a total of 12 women entered, and a total of five finished,” says Obelkevich. In 2025, he estimates about 19,000 women finished. “It’s a big difference in who has been running since 1970,” he says. He also recalls running with mayoral candidate George Spitz, who later came up with the idea to expand the race to the five boroughs.
His third year racing the NYC Marathon, 1975, was memorable because it was the only time he did not finish. About 10 to 15 miles in, Obelkevich felt dizzy. He lay on the grass for a few minutes and resumed the race, alternating between walking and running only to feel dizzy again. With roughly four to five miles left to go, Obelkevich admits he gave up because he didn’t think he would run faster than he did the year before. “Why should I finish? Fred, the race director, came by with his little Fiat and I said ‘Hey, Fred give me a ride,’” Obelkevich recalls. Fred told him to hop in the back and he’d drive him to the finish line. With a laugh, he says “It’s his fault I didn’t finish. He should have said ‘Hell no, Dave. You finish by walking.’”
As participation grew and the marathon expanded to the five boroughs, Obelkevich joined the Millrose Athletic Association to train—but mostly to meet up with runners he befriended in races. “I had so much fun making friends during races. I would carry a couple of business cards with my email address on them,” he says. “Some people never called me back, but a lot did.” Running became Obelkevich’s outlet for exercising, making friends, and even meeting his wife, Lynn, in the 1980s through the running club.
1976-???: The Streak Continues.
AS OBELKEVICH GETS older, his streak is actually what keeps him going. He only learned that he qualified as a marathon streaker in 2005, when New York Road Runners called to congratulate him for having 30 finishes in the NYC Marathon. At the time, he and his friend Tucker Anderson tied for the most consecutive races finished. “I got the seed planted that I’m on a streak,” Obelkevich says. The reminder of his streak is what has pushed him to persevere through the difficult moments, like when he had to start walking more of the hilly portions of the course or when he finally accepted that he could no longer run a marathon in three hours.
By his late 60s, Obelkevich’s mindset shifted toward completion rather than meeting a certain standard. “My goal now is to finish. I don’t care what my time is,” Obelkevich says. “Some use a stopwatch. I use a calendar. I just want to finish.”
New York might be his streak, but it’s also far from his only race. At 83, Obelkevich has completed 115 marathons—from Boston to Melbourne and London to Tokyo. And like his shirt says, he foresees no end date of when he’ll officially call it quits. He knows any one of these races could be his last. But he carries the words of his late friend Toshiko D'Elia (the first woman in the world over 50 to break three hours in a marathon) to heart: “I should keep running marathons until I can't. Don't decide that I'm going to stop here. There'll be a time when I can't run it, and that'll be when I stop.”
If Obelkevich could give one piece of advice on how to be a lifelong runner, he says to run with other people. He’s experienced the difference between running alone, where he tends to move at a slower pace, and running in a group. Once, Obelkevich wanted to break four hours in the NYC marathon. So he donned South African shorts that gave him luck during the Comrades Marathon (one of the oldest ultramarathons held in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa). A stranger noticed his shorts and struck up a conversation. They ran together for an hour before Obelkevich finally checked his watch and saw the time flew by.
“If someone's going roughly your speed, start to chat with them,” he says. “Even if someone looks like they're very self-contained and focused, often they would love to have someone to chat with. It's a great way to meet people.”
Jocelyn Solis-Moreira, MS is the associate health & fitness for Men's Health and has previously written for CNN, Scientific American, Popular Science, and National Geographic before joining the brand. When she's not working, she's doing circus arts or working towards the perfect pull-up.