Tears and champagne were flowing at the New York Marathon yesterday as thousands of runners celebrated personal victories and the joy of anonymity.

“We were like one really, big family,” said James Dawodu, while cloaked in the Nigerian flag, the symbol of his birthplace. “I felt I was running with 30,000 brothers and sisters.”

Elite runners who crossed the finish line yesterday after plowing through five boroughs of concrete, asphalt, and brick looked forward to purses as large as $100,000. But for most runners who finished hours later then the prizewinners in the balmy race, the reward was much more abstract.

For Mr. Dawodu, an engineer based in Germany, the race marked his first time in New York City, the “running mecca of the world” and it coincided with his 50th birthday. It also rekindled memories of running in the moonlight with his friends and family while growing up in a small village called Abeohuta, he said. Only the number of people he ran with then was considerably smaller than yesterday, he said.

Jimmy Haplin, 40, a student at Hunter College, said he finished his first marathon yesterday, a minute under four hours, in order to keep a promise to Oprah.

“If Oprah was able to get off her butt to run a marathon, then I had to do it too,” Mr. Haplin said, in between embraces with friends and through tears of happiness.

He also said after he adopts his first child in January, he’ll have little time to run again.

Other runners, like Kate Dumas, 30, from New Hampshire viewed their participation in the race as an excuse to return to the city they loved. Ms. Dumas left her lifelong Brooklyn neighborhood four months ago to start a travel business.

“It’s really emotionally intense to be here,” Ms. Dumas said. “I can’t tell you how good it made me feel to hear my name called in support throughout the race.” Ms. Dumas was wearing a white shirt with the word “Kate” on both sides.

Many runners who finished the race in the “middle of the pack” said they ran the race before. They also said the euphoria they felt throughout the experience, from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge at Staten Island to Tavern on the Green at Central Park, would ensure they would run it again.

“When I got to the finish line I believed I could accomplish anything I wanted,” said Jennifer Zana, 32, a marketer with an Israeli firm who was enjoying the end of the race with a group of friends and a bottle of champagne. “Everything became simply a question of will.”