BIG Marathons (Read 632 times)

"Hey man, can I have a swig of your apple juice?"

All I can picture right now is Bill Hadar and Seth Rogen from "Superbad" chasing after Andy.

The start at Boston is actually quite disgusting....crowded corrals with "fluid" running downhill under everyone's feet, people trashing residents' Hpkinton yards, etc. Boston IMHO does a bit better with the porta johns but it's never a match for pre-race jitters! The next time I ran Chicago I didn't even try the lines as the start approached....we just hit some trees facing the train tracks. What are they going to do...catch me?? ;D

Absolutely true! Only seen that at Boston, people just squat down in the corrals and piss out the side of their shorts. When the race starts you know EXACTLY what those puddles of liquid are that you are running over. I ran a very small marathon this Sunday here in San Jose. It started and finished directly across the street from a downtown building in which my wife owns a small convenience shop. It's not open on the weekends so no customers. We went to her biz before the marathon and sat around on easy chairs munching a powerbar, reading the paper! Every once in a while get up and hit the bathroom. 10 minutes before the start jog out to the front and GO! Perfect. MTA: bold for emphasis!

Going off topic here but it's worth sharing... My wife's aunt went skiing with her daughter and family shortly after they had moved to Utah. The woman had never been skiing before and there were no easy runs so she ended up with her daughter's family at the top of a hard run, where they promptly left her and skiied down. She went VERY slowly, working her way down. Well it was a LONG run and she had to go really bad halfway down. She tried to take a ski off to walk into the woods but almost lost it so she put it back on and carefully skiied into the edge of the woods, dropped and..well...you get the picture. Still on her skis. Well as luck would have it it was not a flat enough spot, and her skis lost grip and off she slid down the hill, pants still down and squatting. Some ways down she managed to stop, correct her situation, and promptly got to the lodge ASAP and turned in her skis. As they were getting ready to leave, she was waiting for her family outside the lodge and there was a guy there that the ski patrol had brought in on a stretcher. He had a broken leg and they were waiting for the ambulance to arrive. She started talking to him to be friendly and distract him, and asked what happened. "You know, it was the oddest thing. There I was just skiing down the hill, and all of a sudden this woman cuts in front of me skiing down the hill with her pants around her ankles. I was so stunned I lost focus and hit a tree...."

I've noticed that I have a better time at our local big marathon the farther up towards the front I start. Last year's corral 4 was way better than the 1st year's corral 7. I suspect I'd hate the thing in corral 23.

A teammate of mine ran his first marathon at Boston through a charity bib, and ran I think a 3:30 despite starting in the very last corral. I hate to think how far ahead of me he would have been had we started at the same time. As for pissing in the corrals, a friend of mine did that at Boston the last time we ran it. The people next to her were a little surprised when they glanced down and realized she wasn't stretching.