You may have thought that the big story at yesterday s NYC Marathon was the victories by Paula Radcliffe and Martin Lel. Or maybe the impressive times by your CPTC teammates (which are actually posted on this site!). Or even the fact that the Bronx runner won the Five Borough Challenge (though even most people who live in the Bronx probably don’t care about that). You’re wrong, of course.
The real story — as both the Daily News and the NY Post made clear on their front pages today — is that Katie Holmes ran the marathon. Slowly. Very slowly. In fact we’re not even sure if 5:29:58 (12:35/mile) counts as running for a 20-something woman who doesn’t have a prosthetic leg. (By comparison, Sarah Reinertsen, a 30-something woman who does have a prosthetic leg, has a marathon PR of 5:27:04.)
Is it too much to ask that race coverage focus on the actual racers? It’s nice that celebrities want to run marathons, but there are thousands of other runners who are racing the marathon — even if it’s only against their own previous times — and it would be nice to see the mainstream coverage pay a little more attention to them. (Speaking of which, that Lance Armstrong fellow came back and cut 13 minutes off his time, which does not make up for the fact that he’s dating one of the Olsen twins.) This is a serious event, with serious runners. Let’s see some serious reporting on it, too.