The NYC Marathon’s Final Finishers

Two runners with injuries ended the New York City Marathon on their own two feet — and a pair of crutches.

More than 13 hours after the first racers crossed the starting line of the New York City Marathon on Sunday morning, the final two hobbled across the finish line long after the sun had set.

On crutches and with a bandage wrapped around her thigh, Danielle Grimley, 41, of Colorado, crossed just after 9:30 p.m. to complete her first marathon in 10 hours 32 minutes and 7 seconds.

Mario Bollini, 74, of Italy, who started after Ms. Grimley, followed just a few minutes later, finishing in 10:01:47. He said through an interpreter that this was his 37th marathon in New York.

Mr. Bollini said he had run 78 marathons, and in New York he has always finished within 5 hours. (In 1989, he finished in exactly 3 hours.) But he injured his knee in January while training. Two people, he said, had told him he wouldn’t be able to run the race this year. But he was determined to prove them wrong.

In the final miles, Mr. Bollini said, he worried that the medals and food would be gone when he finally finished.

Ms. Grimley has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which affects connective tissues around joints, and she sometimes has knee issues. On Sunday morning, she said, her knees felt fine and she hoped to finish the race in 5 hours.

But in Mile 6, her hip started bothering her. When she reached Mile 17, she said, her hip “went out,” and she ended up in a medical tent at East 80th Street and First Avenue.

She said she asked the medic if he had crutches for her, “and he said, ‘Hell, yeah.’”

As she approached the finish line in Central Park, word had already reached the medics stationed there that someone was finishing on crutches. They met her with a wheelchair.

Unofficial celebrations of back-of-the-pack runners at the New York marathon started in 2016 with a group of people who showed up with cowbells, signs, glow sticks and their cheering voices for racers who might have otherwise finished in the quiet dark.

The race organizers have since built the celebrations into the schedule, also adding a team of 70 volunteers working between Mile 15 and the finish line to offer help and encouragement to the marathon’s final runners.

The New York race, which is generally considered the most welcoming of the major marathons to everyday runners, was the first to begin official celebrations. Many marathons have a cutoff time of around 6 to 8 hours and will sweep the course for stragglers. Sometimes, those lagging runners aren’t allowed to finish.

Now, some of the other majors — which include Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and now Sydney, Australia — have begun copying many of the things New York does to make the finish-line experience special for the later runners.

New York Road Runners, which organizes the race, keeps the course open until 10 p.m. on race day, and racers and spectators are encouraged to stay all evening or come back and cheer.

On Sunday night, dozens of people lined the final 200 meters of the course and the area beyond the finish line. Some earlier finishers had stayed, still wearing the orange ponchos distributed at the end of the race. Others had returned, dressed more warmly in coats, their medals around their necks.The last finishers were spread apart, sometimes arriving in groups, sometimes appearing solo, out of the dark. The small crowd rang cowbells and waved lighted batons that glowed red, green and blue, meeting each runner with a bright welcome in the chilly night.

As Ms. Grimley slowly hopped from Mile 17 through to the finish, she said, she thought about how it would feel if she went back to Colorado without the finisher medal. What would her co-workers say? She kept repeating to herself: “I came too far to quit.”

“I really wanted the medal,” she said.

Two Road Runners volunteers joined Ms. Grimley at Mile 22. At Mile 23, which is a gradual climb along Fifth Avenue to Central Park, she struggled to keep going.

“They had to talk me through,” Ms. Grimley said of the volunteers, Joshua Borzooyeh and Thomas Kim.

Mr. Bollini said he plans to return next year to run his 38th New York City Marathon.

And Ms. Grimley might also run this race again.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” she said, “but I had a really good time.”

Talya Minsberg contributed reporting.