A few more marathon pics

Before I get to posting the rest of the New York adventure, I realized there were some marathon pictures that I forgot to post.

First of all, I forgot to post a picture of Joan Benoit-Sameulson, who is pictured above. She is truly a hero, and a most remarkable person. Who is she, you ask? Well, only the first woman to win the gold medal in the marathon in the Olympics. You see, for a long time, the Olympics makers felt that women were too delicate and wimpy to run marathons. And then in 1984, they decided to give women a shot at the marathon. A beautiful lady named Joan Benoit ran a scorching 2:24:52 and showed those Olympics makers a thing or two. She won the gold medal, and became a legend. She also held the women's marathon world record for a couple of years around the same time. She is now almost 54, and she can still run circles around almost everyone.

For instance, if you are Lance Armstrong, and you decide to run a marathon in under 3 hours, and need a pacer to get you through, who do you call? You call Joan. She helped pace Lance Armstrong to a sub-3-hour marathon in 2006.

I was so happy when we saw a TV motorcycle just ahead of Joan coming down Boylston Street in Boston on her way to a 2:51:29 marathon. She is an inspiration. And just look at that smile on her face. Mark was able to say hello to her at the finish line, and that really made his life. Almost as much as meeting Meb Keflezighi last summer at the Seattle marathon.

Here are a few photos of something else that brought tears to my eyes at the marathon. A huge group of soldiers carrying 40-pound backpacks came running through the finish line. First there was a bunch, and then there were some stragglers over the next 30 minutes. But it was amazing to see them finish the race.We caught up with them on our walk back to the hotel. They said that they had actually started as bandits about 5 hours before the race began.

And this guy was all smiles about what he had experienced that day.

Another tear-jerker was seeing this one below.

You see a runner who is being helped by two other runners. I don't know how far down the street the middle runner's legs stopped working, but they were seriously cramping, and he couldn't put any weight on them. These two other runners gave up what may have been a PR, or at least their goal time in order to stop and help this poor guy get to the finish line. It was amazing to see.

That's it for tonight. I'll get going on some more New York pictures tomorrow.