NEW YORK -- Bob Tozzi views the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as
the world's longest suspension laundry hamper.
Stained sweat shirts. Ancient sweat pants. Torn T-shirts.
By the time the 37,000 runners in the annual New York Marathon
clear the bridge from Staten Island into Brooklyn, they've
abandoned enough funky sportswear to fill one immense (and quite
pungent) locker room.
"Sweat pants when it's cold, ponchos in the rain," said Tozzi,
the Verrazano's general manager, about the orphaned gear. "There
are so many clothes, we literally plow them into piles. Cold days
are worse -- runners wear something until the cannon goes off to
start the race, then they discard it.
"The bridge is just covered with clothes."
Tozzi, 56, is working his tenth and last marathon, his seventh
as the man in charge of making the bridge marathon-ready each
November. The Middletown, N.J., resident is retiring 12 days after
Sunday's 26.2-mile run, which will start -- as it has for the last
30 years -- on his bridge.
"It's a fun day," Tozzi said. "Every year, there's loads of
prep meetings. And in the end, it just happens -- things work out,
and everybody rides the wave. Thank God, in seven years, we've had
no problems."
That includes the 2001 marathon, held less than two months after
the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The ruins of lower Manhattan were
visible to the runners as they crossed the Verrazano that fall
morning.
Tozzi's history with the bridge predates his marathon
involvement. He began as a temporary toll collector on Sept. 19,
1969.
The next year, 127 runners paid a $1 entry fee to participate in
the first New York Marathon, held within the confines of Central
Park. Only 55 finished.
In 1976, for the U.S. bicentennial, the race moved its starting
line to the Staten Island side of the Verrazano. The course, as it
does today, covered all five boroughs for the first time that year.
Tozzi worked three subsequent marathons before his career took
him away from the Verrazano. He returned in 2000 as the bridge's
general manager and supervised preparations for each subsequent
marathon at the span that was the world's longest suspension bridge
when it opened in 1964.
Tozzi's work begins four days before the runners arrive,
coordinating everything from network TV workers laying cables to
bus drivers assigned to transport runners from Manhattan. On the
eve of the race, the New York Road Runners -- the marathon
organizers -- arrive to calibrate the start line.
Tozzi and his team of about 70 bridge workers spend the hours
before the race filling any potholes and covering up the
Verrazano's expansion joints, ensuring none of the participants
catch a running shoe along the 4,260-foot main span.
On Sunday morning, the bridge is shut down in stages before the
10:10 a.m. start floods the Verrazano with runners -- and waves of
tossed-off clothes. In addition to sweats and shirts, the bridge
becomes a repository for hundreds of water bottles and other
garbage.
All the debris is swiftly collected in large trash bins and
removed. The clothing is "mostly old and ripped up, and has no
significant value," Tozzi said. If everything goes well -- and it
always has in the past -- traffic is rolling in both directions by
about 1 p.m.
Tozzi, like most of the runners, goes through his own pre-race
rituals. Unlike the participants, he avoids carbo-loading or
20-mile jogs. "I try to get to bed early Saturday night, because I
have to be in at 5 a.m. Sunday," Tozzi said.
When next year's marathon rolls around, what are the soon-to-be
retired Tozzi's plans?
"I thought about coming back," said Tozzi, his conviction
slowly wavering. "I might. I might."
He pauses.
"Then again, when Sunday morning comes, I might want to stay in
bed," he said with a laugh. "It's an early day."