It’s unclear why WMUR-9, New Hampshire’s largest TV station and therefore agonizingly close to being a media giant, decided to dedicate a short segment last night to a look back at the 2001 Boston Marathon.
I get that Patriots Day, when the race is usually held, is this coming Monday, and that in lieu of covering a new contest, some mention of old ones could be expected this weekend; residents of southern New Hampshire consider the Boston Marathon a local event. But while 20 years is a handy number to work with, so are lots of others. Maybe some crusty old man hanging on to a newsroom staff position in Manchester reads this blog.
While I was in fact awesome that day—with legs partly covered in rapidly drying brownish matter blown from one of my holes in a makeshift loo less than 25 minutes before the video was filmed—the reporting here, though enjoyable as well as nice, was off. We* should demand better from them while still thanking them for their time.
Ndereba, who passed me sometime after the 25-mile mark on Commonwealth Avenue and finished 32 seconds ahead of me despite my own dragging-but-not-dead 5:47 closing mile, finished in 2:23:53, not 2:25:53, as you can see in the video as a nice contrast to what the reporter has just said. She reportedly ran her last mile in 5:01, which meshes with my memory of when she and a bunch of chuckling motorcycle cops rolled on by. I remember thinking as she quickly faded into the pavement ahead, “That is one small fast person. I’m tired, and I bet I could throw her all the way back to Fenway Park if I could only catch up.”
Also, I was the seventh American that day, not the ninth. I’m guessing they consulted the MarathonGuide.com results, where Joshua Kipkemboi and Sammy Ngatia are erroneously listed as American citizens (Ngatia became one soon afterward). This goof is forgivable; no one among the rabble should care about any finishers outside the top five Americans (both men and women) and top fifteen overall (ditto) in any Boston Marathon, much less one held during the days of primitive shoes. But, to borrow from a timeless schoolyard truism, WMUR started it. Also, nah-nah-nah, and I win, not just this topic but the Internet in its entirety.
I mentioned the other day that no one from New Hampshire has bettered my 2001 mark since, whether I use my net time, 2:24:17, or my gun time, 2:24:25. Patrick Moulton of Pelham, after running 2:15:35 in Austin in 2006, jumped into Boston the next year and was treated to driving headwinds and rain the whole way (I watched him pass the 23-mile mark) en route to a 2:24:58 that may well have been worth a sub-2:20:00 on a day like 2001, which had a net headwind of 1 MPH according to the BAA site. That he was the victim of plain bad luck really is too bad, because now people keep paying attention to me and my nonsense.
Flipping through the annals in the other direction reveals that in 1994, Dave Beauley of Nashua recorded a 2:24:16, which placed him outside the top sixty thanks to the field being boosted by tailwind that was notorious until 2011 came along. Beauley was no legitimate 2:24 guy, so it’s probably best to just ignore that data point even though doing so dispenses of all applicable realities of road racing, and go back even further in time to find a better result than both his and mine. That might require going back to the 1980s, a task I hereby assign to someone else. I know the “state record” on the Boston course is 2:18:58 by Ray Currier of Enfield, apparently accomplished with a sub-1:07:00 second half.
It’s hard to believe that even in Aprils with no Boston Marathon, I keep being handed reasons to drag out my musty old aerobic magnum opus and fondly cyberwank to it anew. For that, I am truly sorry.