Metro

NYC Marathon returns after Sandy cancellation

The New York City Marathon returned in grand style on Sunday, with a record number of runners pounding Gotham payment in memory of loved ones lost during these heartbreaking past 12 month.

Two Kenyans — male runner Geoffrey Mutai and female racer Kenyan Priscah Jeptoo — won their competitions, in the first New York marathon since 2011. Bronx resident Buzunesh Deba was the ladies runner-up for the second straight time in her hometown race.

Last year’s big race was canceled after Hurricane Sandy pummeled New York.

Reminders of Sandy, the Newtown school shooting and the Boston Marathon bombing were all over the course on Sunday and near the hearts of competitors.

“This course was full of Boston today — at every turn, people in Boston shirts, in Boston bows, it was really moving,” New York Road Runners president Mary Wittenberg told ABC and ESPN. “I just hope Boston feels a whole lot of support today.”

Wittenberg said the Boston attack and Hurricane Sandy robbed two of America’s great cities of an annual, joyous event.

“Today is a really important day for the marathon, the racing community, New York and Boston and big cities,” she said, “that we were going to continue holding on to and celebrating this beautiful [event of] people coming together the way we can on our streets, in a way we don’t on any other day of the year.”

Heavily armed NYPD officers, on foot and in helicopters, kept an eagle eye on the 50,740 runners and the thousands of additional New Yorkers who showed up to cheer them on.

Sandy Hook Elementary School teacher Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis, who sneaked her students to safety of a bathroom when a crazed gunman stormed campus on Dec. 14, said she thought of victims at every step.

Twenty innocent children and six educators died on that horrible day.

“I’m so aware their lives were lost, that could very well been my own and so I need to honor them and these 26 miles [are] for each of their lives,” Roig-DeBellis said as she tackled the 26.2-mile course.

The race began in Staten Island where runners shivered in a brisk early-morning breeze.

Staten Island was one of the boroughs his hardest by Sandy, leading to some hard feelings when organizers of last year’s race originally said it’d go on despite the surrounding devastation.

Race volunteer Charles Breslin, who lost his house to Sandy, said he doesn’t bear any ill will toward the marathon. He embraced its return.

“I don’t know how the rest of Staten Island feels about, but it can only be a good thing,” he said. “You have to get back to normalcy.”

Additional reporting by Adam Janos and with Post Wires