The back runners

About noon yesterday I sat in my living room watching TV, rapt, as Kenyan runner Susan Chepkemei pumped her way down Fifth Avenue, puking periodically as her body broke down a few miles before the finish line. Russian Lyubov Denisova, who had been nursing a stitch in her side a few minutes earlier, caught up with Chepkemei and dramatically surged past her to win the women's New York City Marathon. It was so exciting, I choked up a little.

My reverie was cut short when the doorbell rang. My friend Andrea and I had decided to check out the the last vestiges of the marathon. I live one block from the running route along Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, so we walked over. In past years I had ventured down to the marathon route somewhere at the beginning of the race, which was thrilling as people whooped and cheered and passed water and Gatorade to the newly sprung sprinters. But I'd never caught the tail end of the marathon, and maybe that's a good thing. It was a bit like last call at a bar. And judging by some of the participants, that's where they seemed to be coming from.

To be fair, people deserve credit just for getting out of bed on a Sunday before noon. And they deserve extra credit for making their way to Staten Island. And for engaging in any kind of exercise, particularly a 26-mile run. But, seriously, many of the people we saw on Fourth Avenue at noon looked like they had just staggered out of the nearest Kelly's Bar and would make it only as far as the next watering hole. It was both comforting and disconcerting to see paramedics tailing them.

"I don't think it's that easy to get into the marathon," Andrea said, as several ruddy-faced women huffed and puffed their way past us wearing bras (not sports bras--bras). I live at about Mile 7 on the route. If these people started at 9:00 a.m. like everyone else and were passing Mile 7 at noon, it means they were averaging 2.3 miles an hour. That means they would not reach the finish line until, oh, Tuesday afternoon. Is a 26-mile race the sort of activity you engage in just for the hell of it? I mean, I know people do it in memory of someone or because they're sponsored or because they just feel good doing it. That's all great. On a good day I could probably run about 8, maybe 9, miles before I'd have to stop and get first aid. Andrea was right: it's not that easy to enter the marathon. One of the eligible categories, however, is people who have applied for and been denied entry to the last three marathons. Seems that was a huge category this year.


Erins go bra

"I always thought of marathoners as elite runners," Andrea said, watching as a bespectacled man in street clothes and a backpack shuffled along, wearing a marathon number. Didn't he read that it was going to be 70 degrees and that he might be going uphill for quite a few miles? Another man wearing a rainbow wig sauntered past, and a horde of people walking briskly and carrying plastic cups of green liquid chatted as they went by. Midori martinis? I wondered. People wandered by wearing flags of many nations, cycling clothes, housedresses, tights. Fashion and practicality did not appear to be high on their list of priorities for this race.


The unamazing race

A woman standing next to us, holding, hooray! a tambourine (we all know how much I love the tambourine) shook it and shouted encouragement at pretty much anyone: "Go, Blondie! Go, Blondie!" "Go, Hungary! Go, Hungary!" "Go, Pink Shorts! go, Pink Shorts!"


Do fries go with that shake?

Today my boss mentioned to one of our colleagues, a clueless, socially awkward programmer type who has lived in New York for almost 20 years, that she walked from her house down to First Avenue in Manhattan to watch the front runners in the marathon. He thought for a minute and said, "That's funny, because there was a marathon in Brooklyn, too." She explained to him that it was the same marathon. "Ah" he said, as though afflicted with a eureka. If he saw what Andrea and I saw, he probably didn't realize they were the back runners of the New York City Marathon.