The burst of oxygen and nutrients fuses with damaged or near-dead IQ points and slowly revives them, slowly but surely bringing them back on line (or on board, if you want to stay away from the too-too modern and stick with the sailboat analogy).

Fromeachrun, we returnaslightly better person, a better version of the person who started the run, a person more streamlined, focused, and alive.

Of course this is all merely a theory, thrown up by several longunused IQ points. —Rich Benyo

Badwate

The Race The Legend

The! Gear

www.badwaterultra.com

adventure’corPs”

“We’re Oy There”

310-312-1841

2™ Annual New Mexico Marathon Take The Challenge on September 17*” 2000 at the New Mexico Marathon! Race starts at 6:00 am! A fast scenic point to point course. Starts at 5800 ft. next to our beautiful Sandia Mountains, and finishes at 4800 ft. in our Historical Old Town Plaza. Entry fee $29 by July 1%. Top elite prizes and beautiful awards for age groups. Finishers will receive marathon medallions and a long sleeve T-Shirt. Register online at http://www.active.com/event_search.cfm For more information, contact Charles Otero at 505/345-4274

May/June 2000

On THE Road

WITH Scott | Douglas

BOOKING A TRIP TO MARATHONING’S PAST

Here’s how the last book on marathoning I read puts it: “Marathon runners feel that the marathon is a microcosm of life. There’s pain, joy, agony, and ecstasy. There is the challenge of doing something worth doing and then accomplishing it. Your success is contingent upon the work that went before.”

Sounds like a fine precis of the marathon’s pull for nervous newbies. Who’s the author? Galloway? Glover? Higdon? Henderson? Herr Penguin? Let’s read on.

“Until recently, few runners would bother to finish a marathon slower than 3:30. They trained hard and raced hard. But now the vast majority of runners finish between 4:30 and 5:30. Like Rocky in the movie, they run not to win, but to go the distance.”

Hmmm, soothing encouragement that, in contrast to the hardcore days of yore, marathons today are mostly populated by John and Jane Q. Public. This hardly narrows the field. (Nor does the antielitist swipe that “not everyone is happy about the change.”) Better keep reading.

“Tf you have been running a half hour daily this year . . . you may be ready to extend yourself.” Okay, cross

Galloway off the list. “Under no circumstances are you to run further than 20 miles [in training].” There goes Henderson. “Run each day at the pace you expect to run the marathon.” So much for Glover and Higdon, propo- sacycraur nents of the hard-easy approach. “During the race you will experience a hellish pain.” Race? Hellish pain? Thus do we lose the Penguin. Will the real author please stand up?

Allow me to introduce the editors of Consumer Guide magazine, who offered these bon mots du marathon not last week, or even last year, but in the 1979 summer edition of their health quarterly, titled, “The Complete Book of Marathon Running: Top Stars Show How Every Runner Can Turn the Marathon Dream into Reality.” Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. .. .

THEN AND NOW

So, in the late ’70s, would-be popularizers of the marathon felt the need to stress its commoners’ representation and its metaphor-for-life appeal.

May/June 2000