A Race Like No Other

 

It's a great week for democracy here in NY. Friday was Halloween, and one of the highlights of that night is always the parade down in the Village. Anyone can participate; all you need is a little creativity and a sense of humor. Or you can just be a spectator. Next Tuesday, of course, we all get to exercise our right to vote, and we certainly hope you'll do that. But as far as I'm concerned, today is always the best day of the New York year: Marathon Day. It's a truly egalitarian world-class sporting event, and a day on which the city invariably puts it's best besneakered foot forward. If you can run 26.2 miles, you can enter. And New Yorkers will cheer you on in all five boroughs. As Liz Robbins notes in her fine new book about the event, A Race Like No Other, 749,741 runners have crossed the finish line since its inception in 1970. The book is an ode to the race, to the racers, and to the city in which it takes place. It tells the tale of last year's event by tracking a series of runners of different skill and background as they make their from Bay Ridge to Billsburg, Long Island City to the Upper East Side, Harlem to the South Bronx, all the way to Central Park. "Fans four deep line both sides of Fourth Avenue as they stand clapping and shouting, some banging on pots and pans for extra emphasis," she writes of the crowd in Park Slope, where we watched. We'll be there again this year, and suggest you join us, if not there than somewhere along the route. Or maybe you're running yourself. In which case, GO GO GO.

Comments

[YF]

Congratulations to defending champ Paula Radcliffe, winner again for the third time at age 34.

[YF]

And congratulations, too, to Marilson Gomes dos Santos, on a stirring come-from-behind victory.