On Sunday morning, 35,000 people started the New York City Marathon. The winner finished about two hours, 10 minutes later. The slowest finished on Monday. The average Joe was out there for about four hours.
Somewhere in the middle of 2:10 and Monday were approximately one thousand college students, maybe 15 of whom are Princeton undergrads. And for every one who runs a marathon, there are dozens of others in the initial stages of training for it.
This column addresses why people, especially so many of us students who are busy with work and clubs, would want to be running for such a long time and subject ourselves to the pain. Sure, the first 18 miles or so are great. What happens next, though, is that lactic acid runs out of its main sources of food and starts eating away at the muscles — that's what I've been told at least. The consequence is that a person running his/her first marathon is unable to run again for a few weeks.
My first explanation of why we do run begins with a short story.
I ran track during freshman year of high school. That was before the whole puberty thing hit and back when all I had to carry around was a 110-pound frame on skinny legs and tennis shoes — not too hard to bust out a couple quick miles under such conditions. Our coach, though, enjoyed the fine art of long-distance torture. Thus, on my track team, if you could sprint, you did. We skinny kids who didn't have enough muscle to explode out of the starting gate ran the one and two-mile.
A similar filtering system seems to exist at Princeton — if you can play on a varsity sport, you do. A large number of the rest of us train for marathons.
At least that's what I and a number of people with whom I've talked to have done. When we realized we could no longer continue our old sport at Princeton's varsity level, but still wanted to compete in an athletic way, we started marathons. That way, we'd still be able to get the same big pat on the back that we did when we beat Crosstown Rival High School in basketball or finished fifth at the state cross country meet.
We miss the adulation, and we're willing to really hurt our bodies to get it back.
Now, I'm not saying the training regimen is bad — it's great for staying in shape, so long as we're keeping it under 18 miles or so a day. After that, though, the lactic acid goes after Mr. Hamstring, and it's really not very healthy. And, since a marathon's an additional eight miles, that's over one hour during which our muscles are disintegrating, which doesn't strike me as too great a deal.
Personally, I ran my first marathon over three weeks ago and was only able to start running again last Thursday. Consequently, I'm in worse shape now than a month ago.
And, of course, as everyone knows, there's the example of that guy who ran the first marathon and died immediately after pronouncing victory for Athens. It's really not a very healthy event once you get down to it.
So why race the marathon instead of something a little healthier — say the 20-milers? Edmund Hillary, the first up Everest, would say something like 'because it's there.' The marathon is the looming mountain that, once climbed, proves our mettle and our athletic prowess, even when we can't make the team here.
We do it because it's perhaps the biggest athletic accomplishment that a lot of us not-so-athletically-inclined people can do. We Princetonians like to accomplish such feats.
But if we told people we ran a half-marathon or a 20-miler, the next question we would get from those across the table in our dining halls would inevitably be 'so when are you running the marathon?'
Until I fully understand and am able to explain that whole lactic acid explanation to my friend across the table, or until coach Barlow of the soccer team comes to the inevitable conclusion that my touch under pressure is good enough to play center defense, I'm going to continue to train to climb my marathon mountains, and the next peak is in Nashville next April.
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