Posts Tagged ‘boston marathon’

Valerie Bertinelli Finishes Boston Marathon in 5:14:37 (Swimsuit Photo Added)

She went out a little too fast, but her 5k splits ended up pretty steady at around 38-39 minutes each.

5k – 0:34:06

10k – 1:10:33

15k – 1:49:17

20k – 2:27:13

Half – 2:35:18

25k – (missing)

30k – 3:44:20

35k – 4:22:57

40k – (missing)

Finish – 5:14:37

And now, as promised (this one’s for you, Eastern Europe!), here is Ms. Bertinelli in a swimsuit:

Hubba hubba!

Ryan Hall Sets American Record for Boston Marathon, Comes in 4th

Bittersweet day for American marathoners. Hall ran a 2:08:41, which is the fastest Boston Marathon ever run by an American, but managed only a 4th place finish because Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot crushed the course record with a 2:05:52. Meb Keflezighi came in 5th (noticeably limping) at 2:09:26 – only 11 seconds slower than his personal best and New York City Marathon winning time.

Universal Sports provided the only video coverage of the race, charging $4.99 for the privilege of listening to Al Trautwig and Larry Rawson – which is like paying to be repeatedly smacked in the head with a two-by-four. I coughed up the fee so you wouldn’t have to miss out on my annual rant about the broadcast. Tune in tomorrow for that.

Boston Athletic Association Fractures Its Funny Bone

As part of the general hijinks for April Fools’ Day, an unknown comic posted a phony Boston Athletic Association web site that announced all Boston Marathon qualifying times would be reduced by 10 minutes, making it a more difficult task to enter the race. A decent prank, aimed at a specific audience, and hardly one to cause much distress among the general public.

The Boston Athletic Association did not appreciate the humor, however, unleashing its attorneys on the faux site. Even worse, the site was taken down before I could get a screen capture of its contents.

So here’s to you, BAA. I guess if you ran this web site, it would have to be called Running Is Not Funny At All.

Valerie Bertinelli to Run Boston Marathon – Cheesecake Photo Added!

If I didn’t have to work for a living, I’d start up a celebrity running site. Sure, there are plenty of people who want to read about Meb Keflezighi and Deena Kastor running, but the numbers don’t lie. A lot more people want to read about Katie Holmes or P. Diddy running.

I need only look over at my own sidebar to see that my blog post from last July about Valerie Bertinelli running a half-marathon continues to get about 40 hits a day. Of course, the accompanying photos might have something to do with it.

Anyway, Bertinelli will be running the 2010 Boston Marathon to raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She talked a little about it on NBC’s Today Show, and it certainly won’t hurt the promotion for her new book (she should really get ex-husband Eddie Van Halen to read it).

After the Newsweek controversy, I posted photos of Sarah Palin actually running, and as you can see, decided to do the same thing this time with Bertinelli. But I can’t drive up my traffic without a cheesecake photo, so here it is!

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Yum!

The Carnival of Running #26 – Boston Marathon Edition

Welcome to the 26th edition of The Carnival of Running!

If you have ever run a marathon, you know how you feel afterwards. Now imagine delaying your food, water, massage and ice while some clown who doesn’t know your name waits for his microphone to work:

Of course, if you’re an elite runner at Boston there are a number of ways to console yourself.

One indication of just how tough Boston is: both of last year’s winners ended up in the hospital this year.

Losing was so painful, some folks simply printed the results of last year’s race.

I might be able to huff and puff my way through the Boston Marathon, but tweeting would be out of the question.

Olympic 10k bronze medalist Shalane Flanagan finished second in the BAA Invitational Mile at Boston and thinks she may move up to the marathon next year.

The Boston Globe has a gallery of photos of people who wore costumes during the race.

As a former historian, it’s hard for me to believe that some people don’t know what Patriots Day commemorates.

Local newspapers really got behind their Boston Marathon qualifiers, from Hawaii all the way to Kamloops.

Something you might want to frame – the elevation chart for the marathon route (you’ll recognize Heartbreak Hill when you see it).

I was far from the only one who thought Universal Sports’ coverage stunk on toast. The residents of LetsRun.com chimed in, and if you read all of their live thread you’ll get a better sense of how frustrating it was.

Some people don’t realize how lucky they were.

Bill Rodgers showed he’s a better runner than prognosticator.

Who cares about running? Here’s a five-part series on the best Boston Marathon pubs.

You might think that writing funny articles about running is easy, but this guy proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that not everyone can do it.

And Jimmy Fallon was hilarious, too. “The 113th Boston Marathon was run today. People train all year to get up early, drink beer and yell at runners.”. Was that really the best he could come up with?

Running along with Kara… on a treadmill.

DC Rainmaker scores with an excellent Boston expo report.

As you might expect, there’s always at least one dissenting voice.

Marathon Mama paced a friend to a monster PR.

Finally, our enthusiastic congratulations to copia verborum, The Running Laminator, Frayed Laces, Bill, Jennifer, and anyone I missed who completed Boston. Great job, one and all.

That’s all for this time, friends. It’s back to regular spring running. Submit your posts to carnival@runningisfunny.com. Now run away!

Why Is Boston Marathon Coverage So Awful?

The Boston Marathon is the most prestigious distance race on the planet, and this year – after some 24 years of futility – American runners had legitimate chances to win in both the men’s and women’s divisions.

National television coverage of the race has bounced from Versus to ESPN to nothing in the last three years, forcing enthusiasts to watch the 2009 running on the Universal Sports web site.

The race itself was well worth watching, particularly the women’s side, as Kara Goucher could not hold her lead over the last mile and finished third. Ryan Hall surged at the end to also finish third after being dropped with about 7 miles to go. I assume Universal was piggybacking on local coverage of the race, but it was very difficult to watch the constant split screens within a tiny viewer.

The visuals were acceptable, but the commentary was not. With all the running talent available, why, why, why do we have to endure Al Trautwig and Larry Rawson again?

Here’s what you missed:

* Rawson telling viewers that wheelchair champion Ernst van Dyk had a “genital defect” instead of a “congenital defect.”

* Rawson asking Trautwig to guess what runner Daniel Rono did while in the city for the New York Marathon, and Trautwig replying, “Sat in traffic?”

* Trautwig and Rawson arguing about cherry blossoms during the latter stages of the women’s race.

* Trautwig several times trumpeting the Ethiopian sweep of the men’s and women’s races, despite the fact that a Kenyan won the women’s race.

* Trautwig and Rawson paying little attention to the plight of second-place women’s finisher Dire Tune, who had to be placed on a stretcher at the end of the race.

Covering marathons is a challenge. It goes on for more than two hours without many dramatic moments, requiring quite a bit of time-filling commentary. This leads to lots of soliloquys about the Ethiopian economy, the wind direction through Boston, and other extraneous stuff. Even so, the coverage failed to provide some basic information, like WHAT MILE ARE THEY ON? A graphic of the elapsed time for both the men’s and women’s races was smart, but without any indication of where the runners were – except for fleeting glimpses of kilometer markers – the time wasn’t very useful.

A marathon will never be a TV ratings bonanza, so if we’re stuck with live video streams, let’s experiment with no commentators and additional graphics, or commentators actually in the pack with the runners, or spectator Twitter reports from various locations (“Kara Goucher threw her GU pack at me!”). Anything to shake things up.