Days away from the 2025 New York City Marathon this Sunday, more than 55,000 participants will once again transform the five boroughs into an extended block party. New champions will be crowned in the elite races and legends will hit the course for the first time.
But a new documentary, “26.2,” dials the clock back to over a year ago for a look at four individuals navigating separate paths of courage — and personal adversity — on the way to conquering the 2024 race.
The film, directed by Nicolas Heller, who has built local cult fanfare as “New York Nico” through his social media glimpses of the city, unlocks another layer of distance running that dives far beyond a typical training block.
Alongside New York Road Runners and its yearly Team Inspire initiative, a pool of marathoners with compelling life stories was narrowed to just four who would be featured in Heller’s film.
In the 34-minute feature, the stories of cancer survivor LaDawn Jefferson, marathon walker Joel “Whammy” Kaufman, stroke survivor Johnny Pye and Shaquille Roberts — who persevered after suffering burns as a youth — push the quest for miles aside and are unapologetic tales of unassuming New Yorkers elevated through a singular quest.
The film opens with all four making their way on a caravan of buses to the start line of last year’s race in the early Sunday morning hours of November 3, and dips into intimate details of their lives that are boldly life and death at times — and no exception.
Jefferson, a police department administrative aide who says she doesn’t “love” running, details the toll battling breast cancer took on her as she endured chemotherapy. She later learned that cancer spread to her spine when she felt pain after a race.
“I didn’t take it out on anybody in my household,” she says halfway through the film “I wasn’t depressed ‘depressed.’ I was just worrying about my life ending.”
Meanwhile, Roberts is depicted inspiration from giving back to his community in the Highbridge section of The Bronx as the co-founder of Bronx Burners, a run club, and says that despite devoting a chunk of his time as the group’s leader, the growth of club has given him more than he could reciprocate. He immigrated to the United States from St. Kitts when he was 12 years old for a skin graft after being injured in a house fire where he suffered burns on over 40 percent of his body. Roberts sought sports as a refuge as some classmates were weary of his appearance and he eventually turned to running.
Pye dealt with a slow recovery from a stroke that he says cost him four years that he simply doesn’t remember and rode an emotional wave that left him feeling that with subsequent family struggles that he simply wasn’t needed anymore. He later gained weight during a bout of poor self image after losing his job.
“I stopped eating and I started walking aimlessly,” he said in the film. “I would walk pass a bridge and negative thoughts would come … These thoughts were just haunting me constantly so to avoid it, I decided to run. Not knowing what day it was, not knowing how far I had been going. My goal was to drive myself into the ground.”
Kaufman found the marathon in 2015 after a runner friend of 40 years was diagnosed with leukemia. After fundraising he turned his attention to running and realized he kept getting hurt, so he decided to run. He proudly boasts the distinction of being the final finisher of the 2023 NYC Marathon, coming in 51,258th place but is determined to keep walking more races and raising money for leukemia research.
Heller, who says he is not a runner, admitted that he was simply a fan of the energy of the marathon to a point where he snuck into a restricted zone at the finish line in Central Park in 2022 and wandered the area until he was caught and escorted out 15 minutes later.
“The marathon is my favorite day in New York City,” Heller said. “I’ve been going for many years and taking whatever photos and videos I can to document the people of my city. I was inspired to go deeper and create a film that honored people’s motivations and stories and celebrate the community that the marathon creates.”
But his brief encounter in 2022 was enough time to gather footage for his popular social media account, which caught the attention of NYRR officials and he was later invited to attend the 2023 race. The initial blocks of “26.2” were built out of those moments and the film purposely strays from the bold glory of the marathon’s stronger — and quicker — finishers, but achieves high marks in relaying to the sport’s outsiders that running is more than a hobby for many. It is life.
At the film’s premiere on Monday in New York, the four stars noted that they were seeing the documentary for the first time as Jefferson pointed out later on that she did not realize certain moments were being captured by the production crew.
“26.2” is a film by Nicolas Heller in collaboration with New York Road Runners’ East 89th St Productions and m ss ng p eces while being distributed Tribeca Films and powered by Giant.
The full documentary is available to watch on Youtube and below.
