Rachel Apa, a 24 year old Bucknell graduate running her first marathon for the Parkinson's Foundation in memory of her grandfather, died Sunday after collapsing in Central Park.
Picture credit : Hollis Kolmansberger
Rachel Apa texted her father from Mile 23 of the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon on Sunday afternoon.
Two words. Final stretch. That was the last message he received from her.
She was 24. She was a Bucknell University graduate and former college field hockey player.
She was running her first marathon for the Parkinson's Foundation in memory of her grandfather, who had died of Parkinson's disease in 2022.
She collapsed in Central Park with roughly two miles to the finish.
She was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Medical Center at 9:40 that evening.
According to multiple accounts, Apa had been feeling the race in her legs from Mile 18.
She texted her father, Steve Apa, from that point. She texted again at Mile 19. She reported pain. She kept going.
The final text came from Mile 23.
Then, roughly a mile later in Central Park, she went down.
A hospital social worker named Michaela Nicholas was spectating nearby and reached her first. She found no pulse.
Two doctors who happened to be watching from the course performed CPR.
Marathon medical staff arrived shortly after with a defibrillator. She was transported to Mount Sinai, where doctors fought to save her for six hours.
Steve Apa told The New York Times that doctors attributed her death to rhabdomyolysis, a condition in which muscle tissue breaks down rapidly and overwhelms the kidneys.
No official cause of death from a medical examiner has been released publicly as of this writing.
The father's account is the only source for the attribution so far.
Her father described her as having been in perfect health and in top physical shape.
He called the loss unfathomable.
She grew up in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania. She played Division I field hockey at Bucknell University.
After graduating, she had been working as a product manager at an electrical components company while pursuing an MBA at Charleston Southern University.
She was 24. She was the kind of person who signs up for her first marathon not to chase a time, but to raise money for a cause that touched her family.
The cause was the Parkinson's Foundation Champions programme, the Foundation's endurance fundraising arm. She raised money in her grandfather's name.
Her mother, Michelle, had travelled to New York to watch Rachel run.
She was tracking the race from the course. When the tracker went silent at Mile 24, she started asking.
Michelle reached the spot in Central Park just as Rachel was being loaded into an ambulance.
She rode with her daughter to Mount Sinai. She stayed for the six hours doctors worked.
New York Road Runners, the organisation that runs the New York City Marathon, confirmed Rachel Apa's death in a statement on Sunday night. She is the first participant to die at the marathon since 2024.
NYRR has emphasised that medical response on the course included rapid access to CPR, a defibrillator and ambulance transport.
By the standards of modern mass marathon medical care, the response was fast.
Marathon deaths remain rare.
The reported incidence of sudden cardiac death at marathons ranges from roughly 0.5 to 1.0 per 100,000 finishers across published studies. In a race of 55,000, the odds are small but not zero.
Most reported marathon deaths are cardiac in origin.
Rhabdomyolysis, if the father's attribution is correct, is a different mechanism. It is a breakdown of muscle fibre on a scale large enough that the released proteins overwhelm the kidneys.
It can be caused by extreme exertion in heat, by dehydration, by genetic predispositions that go undetected, or by combinations of all three.
On Sunday the weather in New York was cool, around 48 degrees Fahrenheit, which argues against a heat trigger.
No one in Rachel Apa's family or in medical statements has suggested she had any known underlying condition.
Her father said she was in top shape. That is often how these cases read.
We write this part of the piece gently.
The point is not to extract a training lesson from a 24 year old's death. Her family is grieving, and the first thing any runner reading this should feel is sorrow for them.
That said, the running community talks after events like this one. It is one of the ways we care for each other.
There are three things worth thinking about.
Rachel Apa texted her father twice to say she was in pain.
Mile 18. Mile 19.
She kept going. In most marathons the vast majority of mid race pain is nothing serious. In a very small number of cases it is.
No runner should ever feel pressure to finish a charity race at the cost of their safety.
If anything hurts in a way that feels different from ordinary marathon pain, slowing down, walking, or stopping entirely is not failure.
Our piece on why walking breaks are making marathoners faster, not slower covers how to use walking strategically. In an emergency, the same tool is also a safety valve.
Modern GPS watches track heart rate, cadence, and sometimes heart rate variability.
A heart rate that climbs beyond expected zones and does not come down is a signal.
A spike in perceived effort without a change in pace is a signal.
We covered the metrics that most runners ignore in our breakdown of the number on your running watch that tells you to stop training. The same principles apply inside a race.
The marathon industry sells first time participation hard.
The post race story is less often told. Our piece on the post marathon crash nobody warns you about is one place to start, but the sport collectively could do more to prepare new runners for the real demands of 26.2 miles.
The Parkinson's Foundation, the organisation Rachel ran for, has been named in multiple reports as the beneficiary of fundraising in her memory.
Donations in her name continue to be accepted.
If you were going to donate to any cause after reading this, that is a natural place to start.
Rachel Apa was 24 years old. She was running her first marathon for a cause that mattered to her family.
She came within two miles of finishing. She did not make it home.
The running community grieves with the Apa family tonight.
The best thing any runner can do with this news is run tomorrow with a little more care, and love for the people waiting at their own finish lines.
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