Snowfall warning for: City of TorontoIssued at 5:30 PM EST WEDNESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2007..10 TO 20 CENTIMETRES OF SNOW LIKELY BY THURSDAY NIGHT..A LOW PRESSURE AREA OVER SOUTHERN ILLINOIS WILL BRING THE FIRST WINTER STORM OF THE SEASON TONIGHT AND THURSDAY. WHILE RAIN HEAVY AT TIMES IS FALLING OVER MOST OF SOUTHERN ONTARIO THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A CHANGE IS IMMINENT. AN OFF DUTY ENVIRONMENT CANADA METEOROLOGIST REPORTED WET SNOW ON HIGHWAY 400 SOUTH OF BARRIE AROUND 5.15 PM. THIS IS THE FIRST SIGN THAT A CHANGEOVER TO SNOW IS STARTING TO OCCUR. AS THE TEMPERATURE FALLS TO NEAR FREEZING THE RAIN WILL QUICKLY CHANGE OVER TO WET SNOW AND ICE PELLETS THIS EVENING AND THEN SNOW HEAVY AT TIMES LATER TONIGHT. NEAR 10 CENTIMETRES OF SNOW IS EXPECTED TO FALL TONIGHT WITH AN ADDITIONAL 10 CENTIMETRES TO FOLLOW ON THURSDAY
That was followed by one of the day's specials. We split three 'sliders', or tuna burgers. It was so delish. They used real tuna and the patties were made up of sashimi quality tuna cubes, barely cooked so it melted in your mouth. They also do mini burgers that are very popular.
I had the fresh portabella: sliced portabella / marinated artichoke / fresh garlic purée / extra virgin olive oil / mozzarella
She had the oven-dried tomato and fresh buffalo mozzarella: zesty tomato sauce / fresh basil
With all these runners, and all this technology, you'd think America would be turning out faster and faster marathoners. Instead, the opposite is happening. The more we run marathons, the slower we get -- an average of 45 minutes slower over the last 25 years. Ryan Hall is the swiftest American-born marathoner ever. His best race isn't in the top 250 of all time.
Hall is running in this weekend's other New York marathon: Saturday's Olympic Trials in Central Park. Don't expect to see him on the victory stand in Beijing, though. Since Shorter retired, only one American man has won a medal in the marathon: Meb Keflezighi, who grew up in Eritrea, where he didn't see a car until he was 10 years old. You can look at this as a triumph of the melting pot, or you can look at it as soft Americans relying on an immigrant to do their arduous running.
It makes me ask: Has this country's marathoning spirit been trampled by hordes of joggers whose only goal is to stagger across the finish line?
After high school, I was a decent recreational runner -- I could break 20 minutes in the 5K -- but somehow, I got it in my mind that I wouldn't be a real runner until I did a marathon. Too lazy, too cocky or too ignorant to do heavy mileage in training, I finished the Chicago Marathon in an ignominious 4 hours and 16 minutes, alternating between cramping and nausea the last four miles. Embarrassed, I resolved to try again, but then a knee problem limited my runs to 10 miles.
I had to give up marathoning just as everyone else was getting into it. Not just the rest of the running world. Everyone. The mid-1990s gave us two new long-distance heroes. The first was Oprah Winfrey. If Frank Shorter inspired the first running boom, Oprah inspired the second, by running the Marine Corps Marathon. And it was a much bigger boom. This was not a spindly 24-year-old Yalie gliding through Old World Munich. This was a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia. If Oprah could run a marathon, shame on anyone who couldn't.
When Oprah expanded the sport, she also lowered the bar for excellence. For the previous generation of marathoners, the goal had been qualifying for Boston. Now, it was beating Oprah. Her time of four hours and 29 minutes -- the Oprah Line -- became the new benchmark for a respectable race. (That was P. Diddy's goal when he ran New York.)
Once the supreme test for hardened runners, the marathon became a gateway into the sport. Soon, gravel paths were crowded with 5-mile-an-hour joggers out to check "26.2 miles" off their life lists.
The guru of these new runners was an ex-music professor named John Bingham, who writes a Runner's World column under the handle "the Penguin." At age 43, Bingham took the admirable step of throwing away his cigarettes and signing up for a race. Unlike Bill Rodgers, he was not headed for athletic glory.
He finished dead last. Bingham did not respond by training harder. Instead, he embraced his God-given lack of talent -- and urged readers to do the same. Absolving runners of the pressure to actually run was a brilliant feel-good message. Thanks to his book, "No Need for Speed," Bingham became the most celebrated marathoner in America. (If you don't believe me, go to the marathon starting chute and ask the runners if they've ever heard of Ryan Hall. Then ask about the Penguin.)
I just didn't get it. After my knee injury, I'd returned to the 5K. I pushed myself into the pain zone, puked after races, and fought my way back down to 20 minutes -- a far more satisfying feat than a four-hour marathon. I was doing all I could do, with what I still had. Yet here was a man whose legs would carry him 26 miles, and he was content to stop for walking breaks.
Like Oprah, Bingham deserves praise for luring insecure, overweight novices off their couches and into running shoes. He's also terrific for business. In the last 15 years, the Chicago Marathon field has increased tenfold, to 45,000. But with this change in the running culture, the average finishing time for men has dropped from 3:32 to 4:15 -- not far from the Oprah Line, or my own performance.Ever thinking of looking at other factors that may have changed the average finishing time? Like age and gender? Oh, it's too hard to look up that info, right?
Last month's Chicago Marathon had to be shut down mid-race, because undertrained five- and six-hour marathoners couldn't handle that much time in the 85-degree heat.
You can't just blame the Penguin Brigade for messing up the curve. The last year an American-born man won a major marathon? 1983. (We have produced one first-class female marathoner -- Deena Kastor has won in Chicago and London -- although we're still waiting for another Joan Benoit Samuelson, gold medalist at the first Olympic women's marathon, in 1984.)
"When the attitude simply becomes to finish, that attitude becomes pervasive," says an old marathoner. "The marathon was once this incredible challenge, to finish it and to finish as fast as you can. I just think there's a mind-set out there about the marathon, and it's a different mind-set from 25 years ago."
If the marathon is populist enough for everyone to pin on a number, it's also populist enough for everyone to kick ass. If you're running the New York City Marathon this weekend, remember, it's a race. True, no matter how hard you push, you're not going to win a gold medal. But maybe a kid in high school will, someday. If the pack can drag the best runners back, we can push them forward, too.
I'm ready to do my part. My bum knee just carried me through a half-marathon. Next spring, I'm going the full distance -- and I'm going to do it in the spirit of the first running boom, in under three and a half hours. I may even wear a cotton T-shirt and a sweatband.
All I can say is, wow. It'll be a strong, strong field.Meb Keflezighi: The headliner of the Olympic Trials following his silver medal-winning performance at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Keflezighi has a marathon personal best time of 2:09:53, run at the 2004 ING New York City Marathon....
Alan Culpepper: Lafayette, Colo., resident Alan Culpepper will look to qualify for his third Olympic team overall and second as a marathoner following his triumph at the 2004 Olympic Trials Marathon in Birmingham, Ala. ...
Ryan Hall: Widely considered the start of the future, 2005 Stanford graduate Ryan Hall of Big Bear Lake, Calif., has recently taken U.S. road racing by storm. Last October he set the U.S. 20 km record with his time of 57 minutes, 54 seconds before setting the U.S. half marathon record in his debut at that distance in January when he stopped the clocks in 59:43. Hall enjoyed another amazing debut performance when he posted the fastest debut marathon in U.S. history in April with his time of 2:08:24 in London.
Abdi Abdirahman: Two-time Olympian and three-time World Outdoor Championships team member in the 10,000 meters Abdi Abdirahman enters the Olympic Trials looking to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Team as a marathoner....
Dan Browne: After qualifying for the 2004 Olympic Team in the 10,000m and the marathon, Dan Browne of Portland, Ore., has since been hampered by two knee surgeries and an emergency appendectomy....
Dathan Ritzenhein: Although he's only completed one marathon in his career, Dathan Ritzenhein of Eugene, Ore, is familiar with running in New York. "Ritz" looked impressive in running close to the lead group for 22 miles at the 2006 ING New York City Marathon before dropping to an 11th place finish in 2:14:01...
Other contenders in the field include 2003 USA champion Ryan Shay (Flagstaff, Ariz.), 2006 Boston Marathon fourth-place finisher Brian Sell (Rochester Hills, Mich.) and American record holder Khalid Khannouchi (Ossining, N.Y.)
Oh yeah, and on Sunday, there's a little road race called the New York City Marathon.
