New York City Marathon

We’re young, healthy and active, so the natural thing to do on the day of the New York City Marathon was obviously to… go and watch 37,000 fitter, more motivated people run 26 miles and 385 yards! That’s over 41 kilometres people!

So many people from all over the world want to run in this race (about 90,000 this year) that you actually have to enter a lottery to win a place on the starting line. Even Lance Armstrong (and Elvis) participated this year. You pay a $9 administration fee for your application, then hope that you win so you can pay the $107 dollar entry fee!

Sarcasm aside, it’s a really awesome race. The course covers all five boroughs of New York City, traverses five bridges and brings out 2 million spectators. And the crowd, us included, are incredibly enthusiastic and supportive. Runners must expect this, because many of them print their names on the front of their shirts. We spectators then oblige and call out encouragement to them as they pass, “Go Billy!”, “Run Ellen!” and our favourite, “You can do it Grandpa Jack!”. Some athletes were so impressed by our strenuous efforts that they ran holding video cameras to capture our brilliant performance. Hardly surprising really.

It must be such a brilliant feeling to train and train the accomplish such a mammoth feat. That said, I bet there’ll be a few thousand people calling in ‘tired’ tomorrow!