spirit of the marathon

Tomorrow I’m running the Nike Women’s 1/2 marathon in San Francisco. On November 2nd, I’ll be running in the ING NYC Marathon. This afternoon I’m resting, drinking water, preparing, and watching the movie “Spirit of the Marathon.” Preparing for a marathon involves so much more than training, shoes, water, an entry ticket. Perhaps the most important part, at least for myself, is the mental endurance. I read runner’s books, blogs, magazine articles - I watch their podcasts, their movies, and listen to their stories. I do this in order to guarantee survival throughout the challenges that my mind will face after each pounding turn, and grueling mile. Here are some of my favorite highlights from the movie:

Sometimes the moments that challenge us the most, define us.

It’s like life, you’re going to hit hiccups and rough periods, but it’s about how you handle those and come through them.

When you cross that finish line, no matter how slow, no matter how fast - it will change your life forever.

The Greeks set an almost religious significance on competition because they believed that it was through competition that the human race achieved its best. There was no marathon race int he ancient Greek Olympics they had nothing longer than about 3000 meters. the story is that when the Persians under Darius the second were invading Greece they landed on the beach of marathon, and the small Athenian army repelled, them and sent them back to their ships. The legend is that a messenger was then sent from marathon to Athens in order to announce the news, “We’re joyful! we are victorious!” and then collapsed and died.

The marathon could be called the modern man’s Everest.

When you become a marathoner, you go from non-marathoner to marathoner. Then when you qualify for Boston, you go from marathoner to Boston Qualifier.

A number of runners from the Boston Athletic Association and several of their coaches went to the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, and they were impressed by the marathon. One of the Boston managers came back and said, “why don’t we have a marathon in Boston?” And they decided to have it on the day which celebrates America’s heroic message, which is Paul Revere, and they had it on Patriot’s day. So you have the whole notion of messengers, freedom, heroism. It was an inspired thing to do; Boston therefore, has the longest and the richest history of any marathon in the world.

The Boston is really unique because of its qualifying system. When I first started running Boston I think we had 150 runners in the race. Gradually throught the 1960s the numbers of runners started to grow and by the 70s we were up to 1000, and the officials saw a way to limit the field, and they put on a standard: you had to have run a previous marathon in 4 hours. Then they started cutting it down to 3 1/2 hours, 3 hours. The more they raised the challenge, the more interested runners became in meeting that challenge. Without realizing it, they had made their race much more popular by making it more difficult to get into.