Be objective wrote:
The New Yorkers and Bostonians need to chill. Us bumblef**k midwesterners aren't trying to usurp your unrivaled and unquestioned importance in the world. Of course you run the best marathons in the world and have the best, and most, spectators. I haven't seen anyone assert that the sun does not, in fact, revolve around the Bos-Wash area. If someone goes that far, I'll be sure to be the first to jump in and defend your rightful position in the world.
I have watched the last 14 chicago marathons and run in two of them. There were less people this year than in better weather years. Chicago, on a nice day, easily turns out a solid million+ to watch the marathon. Yeah, that's a lot of people if you put them all in one place at one time but on a 50 degree sunny day, that's really not much when you consider you're talking about everyone who sees the race over a 26 mile course over a five hour period. This year, it was cold, rainy and windy. Basically terrible conditions for spectators so there were fewer people watching. BTW, there's never anyone on the west side.
In the bigger picture, I'm not sure why people are trying to shoot down an attendence number for a running event. Isn't it good that more than a million people engage, even for a few minutes, in a running event? Isn't that exactly what the running community needs to retain the shoe companies interest in this sport? For all the sub-elite or just pretty good trolls on this board who ran a 9:45 two mile in HS or a 15:10 in college, that's how this works. You want to get up on the high horse about 5:00 marathoners, fine, but they pay the bills so you can follow your dream. If someone says 2 million people watched the race and that affirms the 5:00 people, great. They come back and they pay the bills. If it keeps Daley happy to hear that 2 million people turned out to see the race, great because to stage the marathon, you need to justify to the City the closing of many major streets for an entire day. These things feed into each other in a positive way. Don't be a dumbass about it.
Spot on and good post!
What do you trolls want to prove? You want someone to demand an audience with the mayor to show him "only" 500k watched the marathon? For what purpose? If so, he will re-think allowing his city to be closed down for the marathon every year.
Accept the math of two million, be happy for it. Let the sponsors think it is correct so they will spend!!
And, yes, we'll agree that a higher level of human live in the Boston to Washington corridor and no matter what Chicago does, everything/anything you do is better.
Happy now.