Spirit of the Marathon

We saw the movie last night and it was awesome! Everyone in the theater were big time runners- all the small talk was about what marathons they've done, or are training for, how they are going back to Boston this spring in hopes of good weather, what their trainer is having them do, body fat analysis, the newest shoes on the market, what club they run with. It was great. There were even a few people wearing their marathon jackets etc. We all laughed at the same spots (when they said that the Chicago marathon is typically on the cool side- see Chicago 2007 meltdown). We all teared when an injury was inevitable and the runner had to withdraw from the race, we all clapped at the end (you couldn't help yourself) and we all stayed to see the behind the scene interview with Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. (Ryan Hall won the men's Olympic trials last November at the NYC marathon). It was great. They even had interviews of marathoners such as Joan Benoit Samualson, Katherine Switzer, Jeff Galloway, Grete Waitz, John Kelly, Bill Rogers, Paula Radcliffe and more.

They also had some interesting facts such as:

-they didn't allow women to participate in long distance events because they thought their uterus would fall out.

-The marathon is 26.2 miles or 26 miles and 365 yards because when they were regulating the distance during the London marathon, the Royal family decided that they wanted to see the beginning of it, so they moved the starting line back 365 yards to Windsor Castle.

-they showed Deena Kastor cooking dinner and she mentioned that she doesn't calorie count but food analysis etc, show that she eats about 5,000 a day during marathon training and 3,000 a day when she isn't doing heavy duty training. (she is about my height- 5'4").

-The Boston marathon was started because some guys from Boston ran in the first Olympic marathon in the 1896 in Athens- from Marathon to Athens (this original distance was because the Persians invaded in the bay of marathon, but the Greeks were able to fight them off, so they sent a messenger to Athens (approximately 25 miles away) and when he got to Athens, he delivered the message "victory" over the Persians and fell over and died). So the Boston guys decided to have a marathon on Patriots day, the day when Paul Revere rode his horse to deliver the message that the Brits were invading, because it was symbolic of the original marathon.

-The Boston marathon's plan to limit the number of participants backfired when they set a time limit, it became more popular and more people signed up than ever.

So if you get a chance to see this documentary, and like running, jump on it. They agreed to show the documentary one more time because tickets were in such a high demand that they will be showing it in Feb.

*The only downside the to documentary was that they didn't' show how much pain everyone was in after they finished the marathon. If you want to portray to the American public what it is like to train for and run a marathon, you should include all the marathoners hobbling away and going down the stairs sideways.

*And last but not least, Lance Armstrong will be running Boston this spring!!!

And unfortunately so will Mike Huckabee- yuck, he isn't even legit.