Looking for America

I’m camped in a budget Howard Johnson’s in North Bergen, just off the New Jersey Turnpike, less than a week before the U.S. elections. It’s wet, windy and dark outside, hovering just above freezing. An old Simon & Garfunkel tune floats through my head: “Countin’ the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, they’ve all gone to look for America.” It seems appropriate, somehow.

Every year, after my duties as race director of the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon (STWM) are wrapped up, I travel across the border for my trilogy of American discovery. I take in the Big Three U.S. fall marathons, starting with Chicago, then on to Washington, D.C., for Marine Corps, and finally to New York City, where I’m headed now. With 33,000, 18,000 and 38,000 finishers respectively, these races have mastered the art of the mega-marathon, and I come home each year pumped, and full of great new ideas for our own events. But they also offer three very different looks at America itself, shaped by the host cities and by the unique character of each race.

Chicago is about speed – and this year, after a disastrous heat wave in 2007 that left 30 runners in hospital, it’s about redemption. Marine Corps is truly “America’s marathon,” an outpouring of patriotic pride in the nation’s capital. And New York is a Barnum & Bailey celebration of the sport, a party like only New York can throw, celebrities and all.

Chicago: Bulls and Bears

I blew into the Windy City on the Thursday before the race, ready to work my passage as manager of the “Top 100” corral on the Start Line team. Right away I bumped in Andrey Baranov, who manages a large group of elite Russian runners in Cheboksary, a city 700 kilometres east of Moscow. With him were 2007 Boston champ Lidiya Grigoryeva and 2008 Boston runner-up Alevtina Biktimirova, strong contenders for the Chicago title. Andrey has brought several of his athletes to the SWTM in recent years, including Alevtina, so he invited me to join them for dinner that night. Afterwards, the two runners wanted to go shopping for jewellery. “After the race,” Andrey said.

My duties on Sunday started at 4:30 a.m., but it soon became clear that race day was once again going to be sunny and hot. By the time the runners started at 8:00 a.m., it was already 18 C with 75 per cent humidity. At the three-hour mark it was up to 24 degrees, and by the seven-hour mark when the course closed, it was 29, a record high for October 12 in the city. This year, though, Chicago was more than ready. Race director Carey Pinkowski and the city went way over the top, and the organization – water stations, transportation and medical help – was superb.

The elite races developed along completely opposite paths. The men, led by strong young Kenyan talent Emmanuel Mutai, went out like men possessed, reaching halfway in 1:02:27. It was reminiscent of Sammy Wanjiru’s aggressive charge in the heat and humidity of Beijing. The lead pack was still on course-record pace at 25K before the hot weather and sizzling pace began taking their toll. In the end, it was carnage. Evans Cheruiyot held on best, breaking fellow Kenyan David Mandago at the 38K mark and triumphing in a remarkable time of 2:06:25. After Mandago’s 2:07:37, it was more than four minutes before the third-place finisher, Timothy Cherigat, limped home in 2:11:39.

In stark contrast, a large pack of 12 women ran the first half in a relatively pedestrian 1:16:03. Soon after, my Russian dinner companions from Thursday night took charge and began pulling away from the rest of the field. By 40K, Lidiya had a lead of nearly two minutes, eventually crossing the line in 2:27:17 to claim her $100,000 first-place prize. Alevtina ran steadily for second (and $55,000) in 2:29:32. I was fortunate to be working at the finish line, so I could see Andrey’s huge smile up close. “Now the girls can go shopping,” he said with a grin.

Japan’s Kiyoko Shimahara was the next finisher, relegating the newly crowned Olympic champion, Constantina Dita, to fourth. Stephanie Hood, a relatively unknown Canuck now living in St. Louis, ran an impressive personal best of 2:35:09 for 11th place.

Despite taking a lot of sun, I survived the morning – and so did all of the participants. After the debacle in 2007, the number of international visitors was down from 7,728 to 5,931, and the number of Canadians dropped from 1,104 to 873. Still, 45,000 runners registered and 31,343 ran on the day and made it to the finish line. Organization and water stations were once again put to the test, and easily met the challenge. The on-course crowds were great.

In the past, Chicago has seen world records by runners like Steve Jones, Khalid Khannouchi and Catherine Ndereba. Nowadays, the race is about the very best of the young up-and-comers. With the exception of Dita, the top stars were elsewhere. But this is still the city of the Bulls and the Bears, of Al Capone and Sister Carrie. Tough. Hardcore. Run ’till you puke. “The guys were very aggressive and went after it,” Pinkowski, the race director, noted approvingly. “That’s what the spirit of this event is about.”

Washington: Semper Fidelis

After a week at home in Toronto for the next stop in the Canada Running Series, the Oasis ZooRun, I headed back south for the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) in Washington, D.C. If Chicago is about speed, MCM is the opposite: “No need for speed.” Appropriately, John “The Penguin” Bingham was a speaker at the pre-race pasta dinner. It is the original “People’s Marathon,” with no prize money and (in consequence) no elites. No matter how closely you follow running, you won’t have heard of the winners: they were both first-time marathoners.

Fittingly, instead of dining with Russian elites, I attended the Hall of Fame Dinner in Washington, where I was seated next to Sue and Kim, members of the MCM Ad Hoc Committee. Sue is a police chief in Utah, and over pasta and salad she told us about her only visit to Canada, where she was detained for not declaring the handgun she was carrying in her RV. Kim is an active Marine, heading back to Iraq in 2009, and would be running the race on Sunday. On stage, the American Belles entertained us with songs like the ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’ The chaplain said prayers. More than a few of the participants were planning to run in memory of fallen comrades and family.

On race day, Andrew Dumm, a 23-year-old graduate student from American University, was first home in 2:22:44. He ran the first few miles with his 25-year-old brother Brian, who was home from England where he is on active duty in the Navy. Brian hung on for fifth in 2:26:00, and their father Kenneth, a 57-year-old who works at the Pentagon, completed his eighth MCM in 3:19. The women’s winner, also a rookie, was Cate Fenster of Ohio, who barely clung on to the lead for a four-second victory in 2:48:55. In contrast to Chicago, it was a perfect morning, with temperatures ranging from a chilly, misty 7 C to 20 at the finish.

MCM is for “the people,” and it is also about America, patriotism and waving the flag – which more than a few people carry for the entire 42.195K. Not surprisingly, just 726 of the 30,173 entrants were foreigners this year. Of these, 284 were Canadians, down from 328 in 2007. The course flows past the country’s most significant monuments: the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, the Capitol Building and the National Mall, ending with a punishing climb up to the finish at the Iwo Jima Monument. Most poignant for me was the start by the Arlington National Cemetery, where early-morning mist shrouded rows and rows of white headstones. Some 270,000 Americans, many of them casualties of war, are buried in the 600-acre cemetery.

The event is stripped of much of the commercial branding that characterizes events of this size. Instead, it is run smoothly by more than 5,000 volunteers, including more than 2,000 hand-picked Marines. As a result, some of the runners were there for nothing more than a well-organized race, a scenic course, good crowds (though nothing like Chicago) and finally a medal and a hug from a Marine at the finish. It’s the Corps’s number-one PR exercise of the year, and their presence is everywhere. The Marines’s motto is “Semper Fidelis,” Latin for “Always Loyal.” You join the Army; you join the Navy; you join the Air Force – but you are a Marine, I was told.

The race feels in some ways like traditional America cheering for itself. Of course, this old-school conservatism – “the government that governs least, governs best,” the right to bear arms, the expectations of cheap land on the frontier and the right to own your own home – felt a little under siege as the subprime mortgage and banking meltdown raged on around us. The morning after the race, as I lined up in a Starbucks down the street from the Capitol, a young black teenager in a hoodie approached us selling Obama buttons. “Why you gonna waste your vote?” he asked, when the woman behind me demurred. “My man’s going to win.” I couldn’t imagine teenagers from Toronto out selling Layton, Dion or Harper buttons in downtown Toronto a week before our own election.

New York: Showtime

From Starbucks I got in the van and headed north on Interstate 95 toward the Lady in the Harbour, another American icon. But what a contrast. Leaving behind the politics and the occasionally sombre reflections of America’s patriotism marathon, I headed to the Big Apple for the ultimate celebration of the marathon. The rolling hills of Central Park preclude fast times, but who cares? You’re running through the five boroughs – Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and finishing in Manhattan – past more than a million spectators, behind the biggest names in the marathon world, as part of the biggest marathon field in the world.

If you’re chasing a fast time, you go to Chicago. If you want a well-organized fun run or a non-intimidating venue for a marathon debut, you go to MCM. If you want to end the year with a party, you’re in New York. And you don’t have to be American: of 45,000 accepted applicants last year, there were 847 Canadians, 3,596 Brits, 3,519 Italians, 2,903 French, 2,755 Germans and 1,864 Dutch. New York is arguably the world’s most international marathon, in the media capital of the continent.

Sunday morning dawns chilly, overcast and windy, as I walk from the Sheraton up through Central Park to the media centre in Tavern on the Green. The race will be shown live there, with the men’s race on one screen, the women’s on another and the NBC television broadcast on a third. Next to me is a BBC radio reporter doing live reports into a really techy-looking microphone; in the next row, Japanese reporters are hard at work on their laptops, cryptic characters flowing across the screens. Then comes the moment when every race director’s stomach starts to churn: the helicopters are up, the broadcasters go live and it’s showtime.

“Good morning, and welcome to the 2008 New York City Marathon.” The voice of NBC’s Al Trautwig is beamed in from the start area at the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. “Fred Lebow had a vision. Here we are, 39 years later at the start line of an event that not only benefits this city, it defines it.”

The women’s race this year is about Paula Radcliffe, the world record holder from Britain, who is seeking redemption after another Olympic disappointment and a return to form following the birth of her daughter. After a slow start, Radcliffe punishes the field, winning by nearly two minutes ahead of 40-year-old Lioudmila Petrova, who sets a new masters world record of 2:25:43. “Everyone was younger than me, but I was ready for a fight,” the tough Russian veteran says afterwards. Third place is a surprise: American Kara Goucher, running her first marathon, pulls away from a pack of former world champions, Boston winners and other stars, including Catherine Ndereba, Gete Wami, Rita Jeptoo and Dire Tune. Goucher was born in Queens and lived there until the age of four, when her father was killed by a drunk driver on Harlem River Drive and the family left for Minnesota. “The last two miles were a struggle,” she says. “I thought of my dad a few times. It made me strong. The crowds were yelling, ‘There’s the Queens girl, go Queens girl!’ I wanted to hug them.”

New York can be cruel. My friend from Philadelphia swears this is the only weekend of the year that New Yorkers are civil, let alone friendly. But it is where stars are made. Brazil’s Marilson Gomes dos Santos learned that in 2006, when he emerged from nowhere to win New York. This year, he proves that was no fluke with a dramatic come-from-behind victory over Morocco’s Abderrahime Goumri. “Everybody in Brazil recognizes who I am,” he says after crossing the line in 2:08:43. “They may have a parade for me in Brazil, but it will have to wait: my wife and I are going to Disneyworld for a holiday.” Like Disney, New York has its own magic. “Without the stars,” says race director Mary Wittenberg, “running would be just like yoga. It wouldn’t be the sport we love.”

On the drive back to Toronto the next afternoon, Al Trautwig’s words stick with me. Marathons benefit cities, but also define them. I’ve taken tons of photos of technical things – signage, bleachers, infrastructure – and chatted with race directors from Frankfurt, Hamburg, Vienna, Reykjavik and even Loch Ness. Chicago, MCM and New York are superbly run, technically speaking – but they’re also engaged in a symbiotic relationship with their host cities. Pride and participation define the major American marathons, and that’s something we in Canada can learn from them. We have a long way to go, but races like Toronto Waterfront, Ottawa and Victoria are well on track. Ultimately, these marathons should offer what I experienced on my tour of the Great Republic last fall: a chance to discover cities through the marathons that define them.

Alan Brookes is the race director for the Canada Running Series.