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Recently in Salon Health & Body

Urge
Not this year, dear
I have very little interest in sex -- and neither do millions of other Americans. So where are our support groups?
By Sandy Morris
[11/23/99]

Urge: Naked World
Gobs of groupie sex
Look out, Wilt -- Alanis Morissette and Dustin Hoffman say they bagged their share of fans.
By Hank Hyena
[11/23/99]

Flu be gone!
Two new anti-flu drugs just hit the market and will be backed by millions in advertising. But do they work?
By Arthur Allen
[11/22/99]

Urge: Naked World
Embarrassed Italy boots 350 Nigerian prostitutes
Are officials getting righteous, or just trying to save face for the domestic red-light scene?
By Hank Hyena
[11/22/99]

Health Urge: Nancy Chan
Caught between Milt's lips and a hard Matt
No one trusts me anymore, not even the people I'm not lying to.
By Tracy Quan
[11/22/99]

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Today, more than 400,000 people run in more than 300 marathons in America each year (to say nothing of the 250 Mile Mojave Deathrace), and very few die (although thousands are injured, both in the races and during training).

About 30,000 of those people run in the New York City Marathon and, this year, two of those were my wife, Ellen, and her brother, Jon. Their challenge was clear: To run 26.2 miles, from the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Bridge, through all five boroughs, to the finish line at Central Park's Tavern on the Green restaurant.

My job, as one of 3 million spectators, was to cheer my runners at as many points on the course as possible while simultaneously avoiding the boredom inherent in that mind-numbing task. And so, armed with a subway map and the information gleaned from several restaurant guidebooks, I devised a little competition of my own: a snacking marathon ("Snackathon," if you will). Sure, there were no other participants in my Snackathon, but, as runners like to say, "I'm only competitive with myself." Whatever that means.

My favorite part of the marathon is carbo-loading the night before (which also marks the start of the Snackathon -- perhaps the only place where these two events dovetail). We chose Tony's, a family-style Italian place on Second Avenue, for our pasta feast. As I listened to five runners complain of shin splints, Achilles tendonitis and iliotibial band friction syndrome, it occurred to me that, were they all horses, I'd have to take them out behind the barn and shoot them.

"I'm the only healthy person at this table," I blurted. For at that time, only I could have stood up and walked around the block without pain. Each of these runners (and, I suspect, nearly every participant in the marathon) had suffered a training injury in the past six weeks. And each planned to run anyway.

That night, my wife spent about two hours valiantly coughing up phlegm. In addition to her hip injury, she was running with chest congestion.

On race day, I took Ellen to the bus at 6:30 a.m. for an early deportation to Staten Island. This gave me 90 minutes to make myself breakfast prior to my own ridiculously early departure (the whole city closes down by 9:00 a.m. on marathon Sunday), and I knew I'd need a big one. I fueled myself with bacon and eggs, and at 8:00 a.m., my friend Emily picked me up in her car. (It's a rare treat for a New Yorker to go anywhere by car.) As luck would have it, Emily goes to church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, every Sunday (her father is the minister) and I was allowed to come along for the ride. Luckier still, there are always good snacks at Emily's parents' house (they're Lutherans, thankfully, and not Episcopalians).

The scene at 86th and Fourth in Brooklyn, two hours before the start of the race, was pretty grim. It was me, a news crew, two cops and a drunk in a Yankees cap who kept yelling "Hang in daaaaauh!" Eventually, as hypothermia crept through my extremities, the Achilles Track Club runners started to pass (these are disabled runners who are allowed an early start). I desperately wanted a cup of coffee and a sausage McMuffin with egg (one of the cops had just turned me on to a nearby McDonald's), but I felt duty-bound to cheer the Achilles people. Somehow, their efforts seemed valiant -- as if they sought to prove, "I can be just as stupid with one leg as anybody with two."

Bringing up the rear were a few wheelchair-bound paralyzed competitors being pushed by able-bodied guides. To them I say, God bless you, for you are the only sane people in the race.

Next page | At long last I dipped into McDonald's for my sausage McMuffin