More than 50,000 people are expected to line up Sunday in New York City for the world’s largest marathon. The vast majority aren’t professional runners, instead balancing training with their day jobs — and it turns out, some of those day jobs are pretty high-profile.
Reality television personalities, actors, influencers and Broadway stars will line up for Sunday’s race through New York City, part of a growing movement of famous faces taking on 26.2 miles.
When reality star Joey Graziadei sets out on Sunday, it won’t just be his first marathon, but his first-ever official race.
“I’ll be completely honest, I am nervous,” Graziadei said.
In addition to leading a season of ABC’s storied “Bachelor” franchise, Graziadei won Season 33 of “Dancing with the Stars.” While it presented a different kind of physical challenge, he says the show helped pave the way for his marathon training.
“The biggest thing is the time commitment, just knowing that if you put enough energy and effort into something, you’re going to see the results,” he said. “I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t the best dancer. I got good because of the fact that I put a lot of time and energy and committed fully to it.”
He says he hopes the time he’s spent running will similarly pay off.
Graziadei is among a growing group of celebrities for whom the marathon medal is something worth clearing time for in a jam-packed schedule that would normally have nothing to do with running.
Phil Keoghan, the longtime host of the adventure series “The Amazing Race,” put off a marathon run for years because of his hectic filming schedule. He says a former contestant finally convinced him to take it on this year.
“Sometimes I think people live life too safely,” Keoghan said. “They don’t push themselves, test themselves to extremes, and certainly, running a marathon is a great way for anybody to test themselves.”
The challenge of the marathon has always attracted celebrities, and interest in running has never been higher.
New York Road Runner’s lottery for this year’s TCS New York City Marathon received more than 200,000 applications, a 22% increase compared to 2024, according to the organization.
This year, celebrities entered in the New York City Marathon run the gamut from “Love Island’s” Nic Vansteenberghe to Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service frontman Ben Gibbard, and “Dance Mom” star Chloe Lukasiak. They follow in the footsteps of arguably the most notable recent celebrity to take on 26.2 miles: singer-songwriter Harry Styles. Instead of dropping his long-awaited follow-up to 2022’s “Harry’s House” this fall, Styles dropped a sub-three hour time at the 2025 Berlin Marathon in September, reportedly running under the pseudonym Sted Sarandos and clocking a 2:59:13 finish.
The elusive sub-three hour finish is something Broadway star Jordan Litz is hoping to accomplish in New York on Sunday.
But his day won’t end once he crosses the finish line. After he gets his medal and rehydrates, the actor plans to jump on his bicycle and head about 20 blocks south to the stage door of the Gershwin Theater. That’s so he can be there in time for the 2 p.m. performance of “Wicked,” where he stars as Fiyero. Then, he’ll do the whole show over again at 7 p.m.
“I wanted to do it while I was still at ‘Wicked’ and still part of the Broadway community, and in the heart of New York City,” Litz said of his stacked Sunday schedule. “Because for the most part, I show up at the Gershwin, I do my job and I take off, but over the course of this year, doing all of these extra races in preparation and running all over the city, I’ve run over every inch of this borough, of these five boroughs.”
In Litz’s case, doing his job involves eight performances a week of one of the most physically demanding shows on Broadway. Now add to that an extensive training block for New York, notoriously one of the most grueling marathons for professional and amateur runners alike.
So what made the siren song of the marathon too much to resist?
“Well, first off, I’m crazy,” Litz said. “I’ve always been that kind of person, even when you asked my college teammates when I was a swimmer, I just loved to grind, and I loved to beat up my body and push it to the limits. So a marathon seemed like the logical next step for that kind of thing.”
There’s been some ways in which the physical demands of Litz’s day job have eased his training block needs — after starting with five run days and two lift days a week, he cut back on the running based on some creative mathematics: eight shows a week added up to roughly a six or seven mile run, meaning he could scale back one of his shorter runs and free up a few valuable hours.
Litz did joke that marathon training “has been detrimental” to his onstage capacity.
“It has not helped. Most days I come in and my legs are jelly,” he said with a laugh. “But I’ve done the show in every condition possible, with my knee hurting, my ankle hurting, my voice hurting… It has made the show not scary, in that, oh my gosh, I just ran 22 miles. All I have to do now is play Fiyero on Broadway. That seems so easy compared to what I just did. So from a mental standpoint, I feel like I can conquer the world because of all this training.”
Just two years after losing a foot in a shark attack, Paralympic swimming medalist Ali Truwit is preparing to run the TCS New York City Marathon.
And it’s not just performers. People busy in other worlds — including high-profile athletes — are getting pulled in by the allure of a marathon medal.
Ali Truwit won two Paralympic swimming medals in Paris last summer. The competitive collegiate swimmer enjoyed running before she lost part of her left leg after a shark attack. She says her journey back to marathon running has been transformative.
“I am really proud,” Truwit said. “Every kind of long training run has been a new achievement for me that I never thought I could do on a prosthetic blade.”
Tayshia Adams, another member of Bachelor Nation, will have experience on her side when she lines up for her third New York City Marathon on Sunday. In the lead-up to her first two marathons, she fit in training runs in Kenya and Paris while traveling for work. This time she’d planned to commit her schedule to running and avoid any travel. However, in August, she started filming a new show that required her to move to Los Angeles for six weeks.
“I just realized that there’s no perfect plan,” Adams said. “So I tried to fit in my training along with filming and traveling.”
Scaling back miles and taking advantage of Santa Monica and Newport Beach as replacement running backdrops for Central Park has Adams not only ready for Sunday but planning a fourth marathon in 2026.
“Every year I have my doubts,” Adams said. “Every year I feel like I can’t do it. Every year [I think] my schedule is way too busy… But if you show up for yourself and you just meet yourself out there and just keep trying, keep moving, the people will carry you through the entire thing.”
