Standing firm-footed and philosophical, Angelo Kisil Marino gazes pensively at the horizon from Weequahic Park in Newark, N.J., having just run 42 miles. His contemplation and measured breathing is a guise — he is on the verge of vomiting. “It just looks like I’m reflecting on all my decisions, but I was just trying not to throw up.”
Marino recently finished a run from Princeton to New York City, all 68 miles across riverside towpaths, suburban intersections, and flatlands. The outdoorsy second-year Economics Ph.D. student had dreamed of this adventure since August 2024, and after four months of arduous training, he finally hit the road.
“In my head I was like, no, I committed to this. The way I deal with things I commit to—” Marino said afterwards, his limbs folded in an armchair on the third floor of East Pyne. “It takes a lot for me to give up or bail on something. I don’t want to give up. I want to at least give it a shot.”
Marino was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and he is one of three brothers in an active family. An inherent outdoorsman, he constantly kept his body moving, from hiking long distances and rock-climbing to playing basketball, soccer, or volleyball at the beach. Running had merely been a hobby.
“Angelo is an outlier for me,” said Thomas Kisil Marino, his older brother. “He is very focused on everything he sets himself to do, not only in sports.”
“If he had to run 20 kilometers but it’s already 10 at night, he goes out and runs 20 kilometers. Even though he’s very tired, he can do it,” his brother continued. “And no one can convince him he can do it tomorrow.”
During his research career in Chicago, Marino ran the 2023 Toronto Waterfront Marathon — his first full marathon. While the training cycle was pleasant, the experience itself — loud, crowded, and overly-structured — wasn’t to his taste.
“Running doesn’t feel like a competition to me,” Marino said. For him, the pleasure of long-distance running isn’t derived from earning a medal but from the pleasure of pursuing and achieving a self-motivated goal.
So, Marino decided to transcend the traditional bounds of marathons and designed his first ultramarathon in 2024 from Ubatuba, São Paulo, to Paraty, Rio de Janeiro, a 44.7-mile coastal route. He completed it on his own, without the haste and pressure of a standardized city race.
When Marino moved to Princeton in August 2024, he conceived the ambitious idea of running from campus to Manhattan, a distance notably greater than his previous ultramarathon. While it remained a back-burner idea as Marino focused on the first year of his Ph.D., he eventually scheduled it for the fall.
With help from his brother Thomas, a strength and conditioning coach, Marino embarked on a brutal four-month training cycle, which sometimes entailed a morning marathon on Sunday and another half-marathon on Monday. Then, in the middle of the training cycle, he suffered a rock-climbing accident, resulting in a bone bruise and a missing toenail.
The 68-mile route from Princeton to Central Park, which Marino had designed himself and biked three weeks earlier to ensure its feasibility, was projected to involve 11 hours of running with three dispersed stops, around 30 minutes each. Marino would perform it on Oct. 25, the night after his 27th birthday.
“I could just die at some point and then have to walk a lot,” Marino said, anticipating the worst-case scenario of hitting a wall before the last 19 miles and losing his steady pace, possibly prolonging his journey to 16 hours.
After a late night of birthday festivities, packing preparation, and little sleep, the fated morning arrived. At 4:20 a.m., Marino rose, ate oats and bananas, drank coffee, then biked to the FitzRandolph Gate. His friend Lorenzo Pedretti GS joined him, offering to run the first 14 miles with Marino.
“We are often told that a Ph.D. is a marathon, and I know by experience that having support from others makes it better,” wrote Pedretti in an email to The Daily Princetonian. “I thought the same could apply to a real run.”
At 5 a.m., the two embarked from Nassau Hall, wearing head lamps against the dark. Stars speckled the sky. They ventured down Prospect Avenue and then entered the Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park Trail. For Marino, it was the most familiar leg of the entire route but bitterly cold and foggy at dawn.
Jogging along the canal towpath, the darkness finally broke at 7:20 a.m. The two beheld the scenic sunrise amidst the golden autumnal season. “It was very pretty: the orange light from sunrise and the trees in the towpath were also orange because of the fall leaves and everything,” Marino recalled. “It was a moment when I was pretty happy because…”
His voice trailed off. At the precipice of vulnerability, Marino turned his head and gazed out the window to the courtyard below. Reluctant, he continued, “I was not super excited about the run the whole time during the training cycle.”
In the months leading up to the ultramarathon, Marino’s motivation constantly wavered after what felt like the “worst training cycle [he’s] ever had,” contemplating throwing in the towel altogether. “No one is making me do this, it’s just because I want to,” Marino said. “So, if I don’t feel like doing it, it’s not going to happen.”
Despite his early doubts, when the sun came out, Marino was glad to have been outdoors.
“The towpath early in the morning is very monotonous,” Pedretti wrote. “But we got a sense of the time passing by seeing the change in color of the sky.”
At the 14-mile mark, Pedretti was unsure whether he could continue matching Marino’s pace. Inspired by his friend, Pedretti decided to run the distance back towards Princeton, inadvertently completing his first full marathon.
After traversing 24.1 miles for the first of three legs while listening to some Brazilian samba, Marino rested at a parking lot in Dunellen, N.J., a residential neighborhood. His support team of friends, Naman Agrawal GS and Elettra Preosti GS, met him there by car and surprised him with custom t-shirts bearing Marino’s face and the slogan: “One does not simply stop a Brazilian with a mustache.” (Marino’s friends fed a picture of him and superficial characteristics into ChatGPT for the phrase).
“I never even considered [running from Princeton to New York] as a possibility,” Preosti said. Although, when Marino brought up the idea last spring, she wasn’t the least bit surprised. “A solo journey that challenges himself is something that he would want to do.”
In the car, Marino took off his shoes and attempted to eat while fending off nausea and muscle spasms. However, he was undeterred. “I kind of like this feeling of being tired and sore and just keep moving,” he said.
Departing from the parking lot, Marino began the second 17.4 mile leg towards Newark alone. For a while, he ran on the sidewalk of a single avenue, passing through suburban towns while listening to the six-episode Brazilian true crime podcast “O Síndico” by journalist Chico Felitti.
With around 42 miles of ground covered, Marino took his second rest at Weequahic Park, near the Newark Airport. He was soon to surpass the length of his last ultramarathon, so the last 26 miles were uncharted territory. His body was beginning to feel the effects: nausea, rapid heart rate, shivers, and sore legs.
His friends recorded the contradictory moment when Marino, standing outside, appeared introspective while internally recovering from a nauseous wave.
Marino at his second rest stop.
Courtesy of Angelo Marino
After managing to down half a sandwich and some caffeine pills, Marino took off towards Bergen County for the third leg, the most worrisome stretch through industrial neighborhoods, overpasses, unassuming storefronts, and paved New Jersey monotony.
At an ominous parking lot, Marino was surprised by his friend Cindy Zhao GS, and together they ran around the last 12 miles of the third leg. After the first few miles, the industrial and manufacturing landscape of Newark transformed into dense, lovely trees, reminiscent of the Princeton suburbs. However, Marino began to feel dizzy and lightheaded — an entirely new sensation for him. Alarmed, they slowed their pace to a gentle walk, even though Marino didn’t show his unsteadiness.
“His voice didn’t change, he wasn’t huffing and puffing, he wasn’t red in the face,” Zhao said.
Walking proved an effective remedy, and then it became smooth sailing. When Marino and Zhao crossed the Winant Avenue Bridge, far out southeast beckoned the Manhattan skyline. The final stop was in Overpeck County Park, and the rest didn’t last for long. Marino, overjoyed, was approaching the 12.7-mile home stretch. Abandoning his backpack in the car, he continued alone, only carrying a water bottle and his phone.
“When I saw [the George Washington Bridge], I was really happy.” Recounting the memory, Marino burst into a wondrous smile, then began to laugh. “I don’t even mind if I faint after the bridge. I’m in Manhattan already, I made it!” As commuters barreled down lanes into the city, crossing state lines, so did Marino — joined by another friend, Lori Leu GS. Together, they ran down the North Walk. The Manhattan skyline loomed ahead, a tantalizing finish line.
The pair descended the bridge and entered Washington Heights, followed by Hamilton Heights, which, Marino observed, were teeming with life and music. But in typical New York City fashion, nobody took a second glance at him; nobody knew the unbelievable, arduous odyssey he was undertaking.
“When you do these random things, no one knows what you’re doing,” Marino said. “All the places I ran through, all the people that saw me running, they probably didn’t think anything about me.”
“It’s cool to be ignored,” he added.
68 miles in, the sky dusk, Marino ran with arms wide open into Central Park, the grand finale flagged at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. It’s tradition for the commotion of an entire city to stop for a marathon, but just Agrawal and Preosti awaited him at the end.
“That’s a life-time achievement,” Agrawal said. “He’s going to talk to his kids about it, I’m sure.”
Marino leans back in his armchair, reliving the thrill of reaching the end, a daze that, no matter how many times he recounts the momentous occasion, will never dim. “When you do something so big for yourself, whatever that is, you can reach this peak of happiness which I think is hard to reach with normal, daily life.”
In rosy retrospection, the entire day feels surreal.
“It didn’t feel like 13 hours. It almost feels like a dream. Maybe it’s too painful to be a dream. In a way, it doesn’t feel real.”
Lola Horowitz is a contributing Features writer and a contributing Archives writer for the ‘Prince.’
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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