Staten Island man who lost nearly 200 pounds will be running the NYC Marathon

Incredibly his girlfriend Gwyn has lost 250 lbs. "I don't understand why he gets all the attention and I'm chopped liver".

Staten Island man who lost nearly 200 pounds will be running the NYC Marathon

By Angela Barbuti, NY Post

Published Oct. 31, 2026, 10:03 p.m. ET

This year’s NYC Marathon carries a lot of personal weight for Joe Macklin — who’s running after losing a jaw-dropping 190 pounds.

The 432-pound Staten Islander realized he needed to make a change to his own life after he learned that an acquaintance had lost theirs.

“In September of 2024, a friend of a friend, who was very heavy, ended up passing away,” Macklin, 25, who now weighs 240 pounds, told The Post on Friday from the pickleball court at St. Christopher in Dongan Hills.

So he decided to get gastric bypass surgery.

“And I was like, ‘You know what? I’m healthy enough, let’s see what the doctor says if I’m able to get the surgery,’ because we always talked about it.”

Even before he went under the knife, he started shedding weight.

The requirements for the five-hour surgery was that he follow a liquid diet, undergo an endoscopy, see a cardiologist and get evaluated by a psychologist.

Right after his successful surgery at Staten Island University Hospital in December 2024, he was already down to 388 pounds.

In a week he dropped an additional 20 pounds — and it was off to the races from there.

“After that, once I started exercising, I was losing 10 to 12 pounds a week,” he said.

Three months after surgery, he started to think about running the TCS New York City Marathon.

“I always kept saying, ‘I want to run the marathon,’ and I was like, ‘With that weight I’ll never run,'” said Macklin, who grew up in Emerson Hill and still lives there.

He started by walking with his mother, Renee.

“I would walk for 45 minutes alone, and then I would bring her for 25 minutes. So then those walks ended up becoming me starting to run,” he said.

As fate would have it, Macklin’s father, John, is a director of operations at Brean Capital and the boss of former Bengals and Jets quarterback Boomer Esiason’s nephew. And in July, received a call that the athlete’s foundation needed an additional runner for the Nov. 1 marathon.

“He said, ‘I have a spot open … We’re desperately looking for somebody. Would Joe be interested? You have two minutes to answer,'” Macklin recalled.

Joe Macklin poses with his girlfriend, Gwyn Geressy, outdoors against a backdrop of trees and a golf course.

Macklin and his girlfriend, Gwyn, whom he met at St. John’s University, attended a wedding together the day he officially declared he’d be running the marathon.

Courtesy of Joe Macklin

He had a week to officially confirm his spot, so he got his health checked, having suffered an ulcer the previous November.

“I had like till 4 p.m. that day to declare and it was my girlfriend’s best friend’s wedding. And I had an endoscopy and I told the doctor, ‘Doc, I gotta be out of here in a half hour, my girlfriend’s gonna kill me,'” he said.

“I got changed in the endoscopy room just to get there.”

A Manhattan HVAC mechanic, Macklin runs and plays pickleball every day after work.

The Boomer Esiason Foundation gave him a 16-week training program to follow ahead of the 26.2-mile race through the five boroughs, which Macklin then adapted to fit his routine.

“I just followed my gut, like what’s been working for me, and then I built the tolerance of like seven miles to 10 miles. And where I live is all up and downhill, so three miles was really like four miles,” he said.

Macklin, a Manhattan HVAC mechanic, runs every day after work from 5 to 6 p.m. and then plays pickleball from 7 to 9 p.m.

In September, he ran the Staten Island Half Marathon, clocking in at two hours and 26 minutes and beating his goal by four minutes.

“That’s what really made me feel confident about the marathon,” he said.

The now avid runner, who still sticks to his post-surgery diet of “a lot of protein and some carbs,” like steak, grilled chicken and rice, said his goal is to run the marathon in five hours.

On race day, his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins will be there cheering him on, as well as his girlfriend, Gwyn, whom he met while they were students at St. John’s University.

His father’s birthday happens to fall on the day of the marathon, so afterwards, Macklin, an Edmonton Oilers fan, will watch them take on the Rangers at The Kettle Black, a sports bar on Staten Island, with his family and Gwyn.

With the Boomer Esiason Foundation, Macklin’s running in support of cystic fibrosis, and so far, he’s raised over $6,300 — and said his pickleball teammates really stepped up their donation game.

“There’s a lot of older women that I play with, and I just tap the ball because I don’t want to hurt anybody, and those people are the ones who gave donations,” he said.

“So my generosity paid off.”