Running is Agony

The Boston Herald

By late Monday afternoon, you see them sprawled all over downtown Boston, wrapped in their Mylar blankets - proud, exhausted, happy, many of them in enormous pain, attempting to navigate subway steps backward.

I don't get it. I've tried. I've talked to friends. Friends of friends. My son. My boss. ``It was amazing,'' they all say. ``It was the best.'' They wear the glazed look of martyrs and saints. They act like believers who were blessed with the pain of the stigmata.

They ran the Boston Marathon and the marathon is the Medjurjore of runners. Having run, they're members of a special club. Having been there, they've seen the light.

I've read newspaper articles to understand this. And magazines. And books. And all the words are the same. “It's exhilarating.'' It's this. It's that. Running, the believers believe, is the “ultimate high.’'

I've run a few times. So it was more than a few years ago and it was only two miles and, OK, I walked more than I ran. But what I learned then remains true now: The ultimate high is not to be found anywhere near a running path or a road, but in a cushioned booth at an air-conditioned Brigham's, in spoonfuls of an extra large hot fudge sundae with chocolate chip ice cream, marshmallow and whipped cream.

Eating is pleasure. Running, no matter what runners say, is pain.

Why people run even to answer a phone - if it's important they'll call back - never mind to finish 26.2 miles on a beautiful spring day when they could be out sunning or eating chocolate begs counseling.

But yesterday some 20,000 runners from every state in the country and from 50 countries around the world, did just that. They put up with leg cramps and blisters. They put up with sweat that turned to ice in a sea breeze. They were squished together at the starting line like Frank Perdue's chickens. They were hot and cold and chafed for no other reason except to say, “did it. I ran Boston.’'

Imagine if 20,000 people came to town and took all that energy and raked lawns and painted houses and filled in potholes for a day!

My daughter's friend, Melissa, ran the marathon a few years ago with her now husband, Billy, who proposed to her at the finish line. Wouldn't dinner and dancing, a moonlight stroll and a proposal on one nattily clad knee have been more romantic?

To quote that famous someone, Mr. Anonymous, ``Running is an unnatural act, except from enemies and to the bathroom.'' And yet so many people lined up to watch those runners. 

Of course, they lined up to watch hangings, too. And burnings at the stake. A half-million people lined the route yesterday under a brilliant, sunny sky - not all of them because they have any real interest in running. Human beings are funny - they'll watch just about anything that moves - fire trucks, kids, marching bands, dogs, ducks. Just form a line in the street and there will be men and women setting up lawn chairs, sitting down on the curb, eating popcorn and shouting, ``Way to go!’'

The best thing about yesterday's marathon? It really, really cut down on the long lines people waiting to get into Brigham's.