Athletes can fill up to seven bottles with any legal substance and hand them to Tringali the day before the race. On Saturday afternoon, in a suite at the Hilton New York that overlooks Central Park, athletes took turns taking part in a combination chemistry/arts-and-crafts session.My favorite piece of marathon coverage this year, though, is definitely still the story Liz Robbins wrote on the 8- and 9-year-olds who ran the marathon in the 1970s before an age limit was imposed! Great pictures...
Some brought their own bottles, preferring sizes that fit their hands well or easy-to-open lids. Some used green Gatorade bottles supplied by the race. All added personal touches to make their bottles easily identified.
Some athletes carefully scooped powdered mixes into the bottles. Other poured various ratios of liquids. Several altered the mix for different stations.
Brian Sell combined red Gatorade and Red Bull. Abdi Abdirahman used fruit-punch-flavored sports drink except for the last bottle, which he filled with Coke.
My thoughts are very full of marathoning but also of triathlon - in large part I put aside ambitious running goals this year for the sake of longer-term triathlon development, and I think it was a good choice, but just now is about when I start worrying that I haven't run nearly enough miles to run the race I want!
4 comments:
That can't be good for 8 or 9 year olds to run that far! Crazy!
Yes, but don't they look like they are having an amazing time?!? I was not a runner at that age, but it is just the sort of massive and insane project that I would have LOVED...
I think the worrying is really just pre-race anxiety. It is rare not to wonder if we've prepared well enough. (Sometimes we should worry more about overtraining.)
Interesting bit about the athletes bottles. At the BYOB indoor marathon I ran, I too made sure my bottles were unique (put my name on them and tied a ribbon around the top).
Crazy to hear young kids running a marathon. I did once run one with a 13-year-old, though, a few years back. Apparently, he'd been running long distances with his dad for years and the RD let him.
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