Blood, sweat and marathons
Few activities dovetail so well as a marathon race with our mental metaphors for life
The last time a marathon was halted midstride was in Chicago in 2007. Like Boston two weeks ago, 10,000 runners didn’t finish. Unlike Boston, only one person died, 30 were admitted to hospital and 400 more needed medical attention. The cause was a sweltering day.
Many commentators have spoken about how clever the Tsarnaev brothers were in selecting the world’s most famous marathon as their target, with its vast, highly vulnerable pool of victims — and the cameras of the world catching it all.
But they may have chosen the worst target of all. Because marathoners are both a breed unto themselves and an avatar for our most cherished habits and values — as well as some new ones. In our grief and anger, we would do well to remember them.
Running a race that stretches from the toney shops of Yorkville to the Ford Assembly Plant in Oakville is nothing compared to training for it. Blood, sweat and tears are constant companions. Little wonder only a small fraction of those who start getting in shape for their dream actually fulfil it And only a chosen few are fast enough even to qualify to run Boston. And of those, only one in three gets a precious entry, including 2,000 Canadians. All to collect a medal worth less than $5. Why? As President Barack Obama said at the interfaith service in Boston after the bombing: “To push on. To persevere. To not grow weary. To not get faint. Even when it hurts. Even when our heart aches. We summon the strength that maybe we didn’t even know we had, and we carry on. We finish the race.”
Indeed, few activities dovetail so well with our mental metaphors for life — whether it’s biblical (“Run with endurance the race that is set before us”), or musical (“Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again”), or military (“Pain is weakness leaving the body”), or as one Boston Marathon T-shirt said: “I don’t chase men; I pass them.”
But just as Boston will have to rethink its own race next year, it may be time to expand our perspective on the role marathons play in our country and our lives.
They aren’t just about endurance anymore; they’re about some of the very forces changing North America itself:
The tide of women: When Kathrine Switzer ran the Boston Marathon in 1967, the race director tried to throw her off the course because only men ran marathons. Women were too frail. If they ran that far, they’d never be able to have babies.
By 1980, women made up 11 per cent of U.S. marathoners. Last year, they were 46 per cent. April 15 in Boston, 43 per cent of the 26,839 entrants were women. Pretty soon, just like the gender balance in law school, med school, universities and upper management, women marathoners will be in the majority.
The power of the underdog: A marathon is the only sporting event on Earth where a world-record breaker and a hapless rookie can win the same medal — and where taking part is celebrated as wildly as winning. The runner’s high is more than feeling euphoric at mile 18; it’s being cheered on by half a million people for four hours.
Blended families: Every one of Boston’s 27,000 runners has a proud family, a group of friends and workmates, a neighbourhood and often a cause cheering them on. Multiply that by the more than 500,000 Americans and Canadians who will do a marathon this year and you have a militia of grit and hope that led Obama to say: “For millions of us, what happened on Monday is personal.” It’s also family.
Changing demographics: Remember the man in the front-page photo seen by billions being blown to the ground at the Boston finish line? He’s 78-year-old Bill Iffrig from Lake Stevens, Wash., who finished in a time of 4 hours, 3 minutes, 47 seconds.
That’s astoundingly fast, especially for someone in their late 70s. But it only earned Iffrig a fourth-place finish in his age group. Ten years ago, there was no age group for 78-year-olds. In 1980, a quarter of runners were 40 and over; last year, it was almost double that, and runners 40 and older will soon tip into the majority.
Better health: I’ve seen a few chunky runners in other marathons but never in Boston. So at a time when two-thirds of Canadians are overweight, it’s heartening to see both the number of marathons and the number of marathoners rising. Ten years from now we can also expect slower times, but smarter runners. Smarter? Sure, the link between exercise and forestalling dementia is now clearly established. You don’t have to run a marathon to keep your brain in shape. But the discipline of training comes with three kinds of built-in rewards: physical, psychological and cranial. Risk awareness: One in 67,000 marathoners dies running a marathon. Many of them are young males who are cocky and fit, but not fit enough to stress their heart for 26.2 miles. You can get pretty catastrophic in those last gruelling miles of a marathon, but thinking you’re going to die is usually not on the list. So I doubt that the Boston bombings will keep even the most risk-averse runners from gaining their precious entry for next year’s race. Indeed, it seems Boston’s 27,000 slots will fill up faster than ever, including our 2,000-plus Canadians. For those runners and the millions more around the world whose lives are changed by stepping across a finish line, the risk has risen from infinitesimal to tiny. But it still pales compared to the rewards. My wife ran in Boston. She’s 70 and this was her fifth Boston Marathon. She finished 10 minutes before the first bomb went off. I was in the crowd, and for the next two hours, we didn’t know if either of us was dead or alive. When we got back home to Toronto the next day, lots of friends asked her: “Will you run Boston next year?” The Boston Marathon was first run117 years ago. But Boston first said “no” to tyranny 238 years ago on April 19, 1775, at the Battle of Lexington, an event officially celebrated in Boston as “Patriots’ Day,” whose highlight is always the Boston Marathon. What terrorism has always tried to do is re-establish tyranny. But just days after the slaughter on Boylston Street, it’s not only marathoners and Bostonians who have said “no,” it’s all of us.