I’ve never understood marathons.
My go-to comment whenever anybody brings up the topic is: You know there are cabs, don’t you?
Or buses. Or the el. Or bicycles. Or private cars. There’s tons of technologies that can transport us 26-plus miles. I just cannot figure out why people would subject themselves to the rigors of the more than three-to-five-hour ordeal that is a marathon.
Hell, if you want, you can hitchhike 26 miles.
Yet thousands, tens of thousands, for chrissakes hundreds of thousands of people run marathons each year. Take, for instance, the top eight marathons in the United States in 2023. Here are the total entrants or finishers for each that year:
- New York — 51,402
- Chicago — 48.398
- Philadelphia — 34,000
- Boston — 30,000
- Honolulu — 25,000
- Washington, DC (Marine Corps Marathon) — 23,000
- Los Angeles — 22,000
- Orlando (Walt Disney World Marathon) — 12,690
That’s a grand total of 246,490 poor, tortured souls who slogged their way through the streets, alleys, and paths of those cities. I could only find precise totals for New York, Chicago, Orlando, and Boston (that city places a limit on the number of entrants). As for the rest of them, who knows? Maybe marathon organizers look upon their final figures the way governments and historians view war dead, as grisly estimates. War, I would imagine, cannot be much more hellish than running 26-plus miles at a crack.
More than a thousand official marathons are run each year around the globe. That doesn’t even include half-marathons, which might seem a tad more sane than running a full one but, then again, that’s like saying the person who is splattered on the pavement at the foot of a skyscraper was half-pushed, half tripped off the roof. No matter, the gory result is the same.
More than 120,000 masochists applied to enter Chicago’s 2024 marathon, to be run Sunday, October 13th. Back when I lived in the artists’ enclave of East Pilsen on the city’s South Side, the marathon course went right past my house, the runners’ and their massed cheerers’ racket disturbing my beauty sleep at an ungodly hour. Don’t these damed fools know, I moaned every year, that I was out drinking last night? The nerve!
Anyway, I bring this up because a dear friend this past week informed me she is going to run in the Every Woman’s Marathon in Savannah, Georgia this November. She seemed to be in full possession of her wits and sanity — that is, up until the moment she broke the news to me. I looked at her as if she’d announced she’d drunk a bottle of Lysol™ the night before so as to cleanse her digestive system.
Of course, I didn’t say outright she’s nuts, although that’s certainly what I think now. I congratulated her and wished her well. She’s excited. She’s run marathons before, she told me, proudly. She must train for weeks, even months prior to each event. This is over and above her normal running routine.
I tried jogging a few times back in the mid-1980s. I quickly stopped it in deference to my hips, knees, lungs, heart, and mental health. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy running. I played baseball back then and loved sprinting around the bases and galloping in the outfield in pursuit of fly balls. The act of motoring through the field via my legs was exhilarating. Not only that, I was a bicycle freak in those days, riding even through the harshest of winters. In 2000, I pedaled in the 500-mile AIDS ride from Minneapolis to Chicago. But jogging seemed so pointless, such a waste of my time.
So, I’m not averse to actually using my muscles to get around on this planet. It’s just that…, well, I’m sensible — at least in that regard.
Natch, I’m loony in tons of areas of my life. I try to resist the urge to overindulge in countless ways but I succumb to excess and even addiction in many. But running 26-plus miles on a Sunday morning? Uh uh.
So, what the hell is it that drives these maniacs?
ABC News posed the Q to marathoners prior to the NYC event in 2022. One veteran replied “When it’s so tough, you’re like, ‘Oh, my God, why did I put my body through this?'”
The BBC asked the same thing. A respondent, a veteran of nine marathons and author of a book for those wishing to get into the sport, called himself a “delayed gratification junkie.” Junkie being the key word here, I guess.
The fellow explained his irresistible attraction to marathoning: “”There is a surge to it you don’t get from other sports, because the sheer amount of time and effort that goes into a single marathon dwarfs that of an individual soccer game or tennis match. Can you push yourself through enough hell to finish is the only question.”
Hell. Like I said.
See? Even marathon runners think they’re loony.
Then comes the payoff, acc’d’g to the ABC report: “[T]he ‘runner’s high’ is no myth as the hormonal aspect of marathon running plays a big role in why people feel compelled to join in. Running is known for giving athletes a rush of endorphins, and crossing the finish line of an hourslong race can be described by some as euphoric.”
For my dough, a good, strong Bourbon cocktail does the trick.
But, that’s me. And who am I to want to deny anyone their deranged obsession?
You know what? I hope my dear friend does well in that Georgia marathon. I hope she runs her fastest ever such race which, I understand, is the big goal. If she does so, she can brag to me about it and I’ll slap her on the back and say Hooray!
Really, I’ll be happy for her.
But she’s still a loon.