Plodders Have a Place, but Is It in a Marathon?

I checked my email acct today and had a handful of folks forward me the article in the New York Times Sports section about "Slow Marathoners." Just how slow is slow? Well if you can't run walk a marathon in 6 hours I would say that you are slow. Now...that is just my opinion. This is the time we give runners at our Delaware Marathon. Last year at our Delaware Marathon we had 529 finishers. Out of those only 12 runners did not break the 6 hour mark and one finished in 7:11. That is like .022% of the field. What you don't know is we sent out an email to all those who put down estimated time of 6 hours plus to let them know we were going to have an early bird start beginning at 6:15 am which would be a 45 minute head start. With chip timing we can do this unofficial start. It worked. It got the slow runners off the course in the 6 hour time limit and allowed our volunteers to relax and head home. Also, we have to have time limits with the City of Wilmington to open up the streets to afternoon traffic. Six hours into the marathon was the best we could manage. The medal at the finish line means so much to the slow marathon runners. They know they will never win a marathon but for them to finish is good enough for them. I applaud them all.....I remember when i was running marathons. My best was 3:20 but i started to slow down and enjoyed the 4 hour marathon pace. But after 4 hours i just get too beat up. I told my wife Barb, "if it takes me longer to run 26 miles than it does to play a round of golf then i am done with running the marathon." You know what..... my golf game improved.