You never know you’ll see running through the streets of NYC on the first Sunday in November each year.
Two of the familiar faces who ran in Sunday’s New York City Marathon were comedian, actor, writer, and rapper, Chico Bean; as well as rapper and podcaster, N.O.R.E..
Yes, celebrities often run New York this time of year. But make no mistake, no one gets special treatment on those streets.
It's just the runner versus the 26.2 miles.
“Nobody is a celebrity when you running,” N.O.R.E. said. “You can run next to the person who owns Walmart, and you can run next to the person who works in Walmart. Everybody is on the same level when you are running.”
Bean has been documenting his fitness journey and marathon training in a multi-episode Andscape digital docuseries titled, MAJOR: Chico Bean.
“I started running just to lose weight,” Chico said. “I found out I had high blood pressure, and how dangerous and how bad that was for us as Black men especially. I realized that [running] is not just beneficial for health reasons, it’s beneficial for social reasons, it’s beneficial for mental reasons. It’s beneficial in so many different ways that you don’t know until you start.”
Chico was guided through this fitness journey by Mad Miles run club founder Cornell Jones.
“It’s a beautiful accomplishment,” Chico said of finishing the race on Sunday. “But if it wasn’t for my brother [Cornell Jones], I would have ran right to the Brooklyn Chop House.”
Bean’s body took quite the beating running the streets of the five boroughs on Sunday, so much so that he had to stop and walk for a while due to a cramp.
The pain was worth the gain—to a point. Chico said that running the New York City Marathon was the hardest thing he had ever chosen to do in his life.
Asked if he would ever run it again, Chico said, “F*ck naw!”
Red Summer TV/Andscape Executive Producer Kim Osorio followed Chico and N.O.R.E. throughout the streets of New York on Sunday and was highly impressed by both of their performances.
“For the documenting of Chico, we had to jump on the train to meet up at different markers,” Osorio said. “In order to film his progress, the producers had to keep close track of where Bean was during the race. I couldn’t believe the icon on my app was moving so quickly. I was like, ‘He can’t possibly be going that fast! Every time we landed at a new location, we beat him there by just a few minutes.’”
Chico finished the Marathon with an official time of 5:41:14, while N.O.R.E. crossed the finish line with a time of 5:06:52.
“It’s so important when someone like N.O.R.E. champions things like running a marathon,” Osorio said. “Seeing N.O.R.E. out there finishing that race and letting our community know that health is wealth is a message that our hip-hop icons should be pushing at this stage of our lives.”
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