By Yepoka Yeebo
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CENTRAL PARK— The Chilean miner who survived his ordeal by running through tunnels half a mile below the earth's surface received his official New York City Marathon race bib in Central Park on Thursday.
Speaking at a press conference near the marathon's finish line, Edison Peña described running to beat the odds, and mimed giving the mine an upper-cut in a fist fight.
"I was running to be an active participant in my own salvation, I wasn't just waiting around," said Peña, 34.
"I also wanted God to see that I really wanted to live."
Peña, who spoke through a translator from the Chilean consulate, famously cut the tops off his boots so he could run in the mine, guided by the light of his miner's helmet.
"It was so dark that you couldn't see your hand in front of your face," he said — that was, until rescuers lowered lights and an iPod loaded with Elvis Presley songs, into the mine.
"The first thing I asked for was an iPod with Elvis tunes. I thought I would never hear him again," he said, after singing a few lines of "Return to Sender."
Mary Wittenberg, the president and CEO of New York Road Runners, said Peña struck a chord with the city's running community.
"We know running is a light, we know running is a salvation, we know running is an anchor," said Wittenberg. "We immediately felt a little bit better when we learned that one of the miners had that force of running with him while in the darkness."
Wittenberg said when New York Road Runners originally invited Peña to the marathon, it was as a celebrity spectator who would tour the route in a car. "It didn't even strike us that he would want to run," she said.
Peña said he was keen to participate, and hoped to finish in six hours. "I was very eager to take on this huge challenge of the New York Marathon," he said, asking the press not to "rip him apart" if a knee injury sustained in the mine stopped him from finishing.
Peña arrived in New York on Thursday morning with wife Angelica, 34, and was greeted by star runner Haile Gebrselassie. Peña was the 12th of 32 miners to be rescued from the San Jose mine on October 13.
Before he was invited to take part in the 26.2 mile race, Pena said he had never thought of entering the marathon.
"I never had the means to even entertain the possibility of participating," he said.
