It's not a race...

I was slogging through a muggy 17 miles yesterday and thinking something like "this is good training for the race" when I suddenly realized that marathons should not be called races for people like me. A race is something where you try to beat other people. For me a marathon just it's a race anymore, if it ever was. I think marathons are races for only about 10% of those who run them, if that. Only the top 0.5% have any hope of placing, really, and the rest of the top 10% are really competing with each other. But for the rest of us, well it's not a race, it just an event. An event is where you just try to survive until the end without passing out, puking all over yourself, or having a limb fall off. Yup, marathons are definitely events for me.