NYC Marathon Pre-Game
We’re about 36 hours away from, jeez, what is it, my 9th year of sitting on my ass and watching this? (Damn leg.) Anyway, here’s a little info about the race that you could probably get elsewhere, but won’t because you’re all very lazy people:
On the mens’ side of things, it’s a very different year. Some familiar faces are out, you’ve got a lot of US presence (even if it’s naturalized US presence; hell, we’re all immigrants here) in the elite men, and you’ve got some faces you haven’t seen in New York for quite some time making returns. Meb is back, and the fella I’d consider the favorite going in, Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot returns after what I’m pretty sure is a 4 year hiatus, which he’s spent beating the living piss out of the Boston course. However, Marilson Gomes dos Santos will be back to defend his title, and he was a much more confident runner last year, so it won’t be a cakewalk for Cheruiyot or anyone else.
Over on the womens’ side, it’s also a very unfamiliar field to me, aside from defending champion and superwoman Paula Radcliffe and, holy mother of pearl, Ludmila Petrova is back at 41, after taking 2nd last year! That should be a pretty solid rematch.
I’ll tell you where the real action is this year, though, folks: the wheeler divisions! I kid you not, both the mens’ and womens’ wheeler divisions, which will hopefully get a fair amount of airtime, are absolutely STACKED. It’s like the Wheeler Hall Of Fame up in this. I’m not sure whether the web feed will have cameras on multiple race leads, but I’m hoping, because this is going to be stellar.
The weather for Sunday looks to be maybe 5 degrees warmer than I think the participants would like (I could be wrong on this) with a high of 58, but not super warm, and the course is going to be a little wet and perhaps slippery from the overnight rain.
I’ll be here starting fairly early (television race coverage starts at 9 AM Eastern Standard Time) to yell “RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN” for 5 hours or so, so stop by if you’re into that sort of thing.