"To cajole
me through tough evening sessions like this, Arnie told and retold stories of famous Bostons. I loved listening to them--until
this night when I snapped and said, "Oh, let's quit talking about the Boston Marathon and
run the damn thing!"
"No woman can run the Boston Marathon," Arnie fired back.
"Why not? I'm running 10 miles a night!"
Arnie insisted the distance was too long for
fragile women to run and exploded when I said that
Roberta Gibb had jumped into the race and finished it the previous April."
[more inside]
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Apr 7, 2012 -
29 comments
Could you run a marathon without training? [bbc.co.uk] "London Marathon entrants have a month of training left for what’s seen as one of the greatest feats of human endurance. Yet Irish twins Jedward claim they completed the Los Angeles marathon without any training. So is it possible to run one on a whim?"
posted by Fizz
on Mar 21, 2012 -
112 comments
24 year old Olympic marathon champion Sammy Wanjiru
died yesterday in Nyahururu, Kenya after "falling" from a balcony.
Sammy set a world record for the half marathon of 58:53 in the United Arab Emirates in 2007, only to best it again two months later in the Netherlands, with a 58:35. He won five marathons, setting an Olympic record of 2:06:32 in 2008, and a personal best of 2:05:10 in London in 2009. He might be best remembered for his
dramatic win in Chicago in 2010.
[more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen
on May 16, 2011 -
28 comments
Since approximately
26% of Canadian children age 2-17 are now considered obese, few would disagree that drastic measures are warranted. A dude and his wife have decided that the best way to inspire kids to get some exercise outdoors is to
run daily marathons across the country.
[more inside]
posted by sarastro
on Dec 17, 2010 -
41 comments
“Several of you told me that I was “going to die” if I drank 13 beers while running the San Francisco Half Marathon. I did not die. I puked three times, blacked out for miles 11 and 12, and needed five hours to finish.
This is my story.”
posted by sveskemus
on Aug 3, 2010 -
64 comments
Next weekend, thousands of runners will take to the streets of San Francisco to run the
SF Marathon, on a course with hills that skate a 300 ft. elevation about
six times over 26.2 miles. However, the non-corporately sponsored marathon attracts few than a third of the runners who tackle New York City and Chicago. While the organizers are trying to
re-brand the race, offering
two different half marathon courses, they have shied away from making the course any easier.
posted by roomthreeseventeen
on Jul 15, 2010 -
26 comments
"In 1968, I received an invitation to the hundred-mile run at Walton-on-Thames, England, scheduled for October 1969. I pulled out all the stops for this one, running every marathon possible and enduring unheard-of training mileage when not racing.
In July alone I ran a thousand miles, two hundred short of my goal[...]My only goal was to break the existing American record of 16:07:43." (Which he did, finishing in 13:33; still the U.S. 45 to 49 100-mile record.) Ted Corbitt, Olympian, American Record holder at 100 miles, died yesterday.
NYT obit. [more inside]
posted by OmieWise
on Dec 13, 2007 -
13 comments
Today is the 105th running of the Boston Marathon. Growing up in Natick, Massachusetts, which is the ten-mile point of the route, the Marathon was always a huge deal. I remember watching every year as the wheelchair racers would zoom by to the roar of the crowd. We'd then wait a few minutes until the State Police motorcycles and the press trucks marked the lead runners. Before long the street was nothing but a solid wall of runners in all shapes, sizes and colors. A favorite thing to do would be to cheer someone on based on the t-shirt they were wearing. One year I saw a man wearing a t-shirt with a picture of the Mandlebrot Set. I yelled "Go fractal man!" He looked at me and smiled, and I knew I gave him a little bit of a boost that day. The race is certainly a yearly tradition around these parts. Does the rest of the world care? Is this big news elsewhere or just a small blurb on Page E-6?
posted by bondcliff
on Apr 16, 2001 -
37 comments
