LetsRunners - Help Save The Pro NY Race - Where else can it be run and when?

Do an elite crit somewhere in NYC inor near C.P. Small 1k loop, elite's only - sponsored by ING/NYRR and televised by ESPN. Only 1 water stop needed. Easy to secure and televise. Would cause less disrpution than a football game and all the players/elites are already there. Gotta decide now though cause many on ready to leave.

Actually, an elite crit is a good idea. Do the five x the 5-mile loops they used in '07 and throw in the finish around the bottom of the park and you've got a pretty good event that would help the sport. Anyone in the Olympic standards can run.

Hey you guys are freaking geniuses.

Something like a Central Park race would be viable but it would have to be this weekend. You couldn't keep this elite field intact longer than that. Individuals will go elsewhere ...guys of the level of Arciniaga, Gotcher, Bauhs and Vaughn could certainly show up in Philly or at Cal International a little later.

I think the elites should be able to run this weekend. On ESPN i heard this marathon be referred to as a parade, and how it should not be going around NYC at a time like this. I agree that there shouldn't be thousands of people running including some who dress up and joke around because that would be insulting to people living there without their homes. However the elites who take this race seriously because it is there job and they depend on it for money deserve to run.

Harrisburg PA! wrote:

Harrisburg PA marathon is next weekend on the 11th. Tiny but well run marathon. Registration is even still open!

Also it is the capital city of a bordering state so there is that tie in too...

Now how friggin' awesome would that be?!?

Night race. Four loops around Central Park. ESPN. This weekend. It would be so great.

Shoot, I was hoping that wasn't going to happen.I have been registered for this one for a while. I wanted to do a small time marathon. I do feel sorry for all the people that have been training, planning and tapering though. I would think Harrisburg could handle 4,000 to 5,000 runners. Good luck to everyone

Here you can see the video of where I asked Mary the question about the elites. I'm the 2nd question.

http://www.flotrack.org/coverage/249877-2012-ING-New-York-City-Marathon/video/660651-Mary-Wittenberg-message-to-Elite-Athletes-who-came-to-run-the-marathon

The Marathoners and runners are NOT THE VICTIMS in all this! GET IT?

RuKiddingMe!!! wrote:

The Marathoners and runners are NOT THE VICTIMS in all this! GET IT?

What a dumb reply. Of course they are.

Doing a quick search of marathonguide.com and this is the only race that would work in the Northeast. Extending a taper three weeks instead of two would probably help more runners.

Prime-time Sunday night race under the lights around Central Park would get good ratings.

Everyone watching Sunday night football would flip the channel to check it out.

Would be very memorable. Instant classic. Check out the You Tube videos of the night marathon at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Same type of thing.

ABC TV has the contract...oops have open airtime on Sunday

SFbayRunner wrote:

Night race. Four loops around Central Park. ESPN. This weekend. It would be so great.

sorry for the marathoners, particularly the elites who get only a few paydays per year and now have wasted their taper, but ultimately there are millions with far bigger problems. they're still finding bodies. as for pro football, it is impervious to criticism in this country (or really, outside of the south, where it is all college football). you have guys obviously doing drugs constantly and many testing positive, but never any scandals, whereas the very fiber of our society is destroyed if the tour de france or major league baseball have a positive. running 4x CP is the right thing to do, but not this weekend. 2007 trials were terrific, but it must be said that the crowd was sparse. I had a blast running back and forth across the park cheering them on. Not a good year for Mary. She jacks up the price way over 200 bucks (which is why I broke my five year streak of running NYC by not signing up), she tries to hold the marathon just after a devastating storm has hit the area and wasn't even going to give back the entry fees for those who couldn't make it because of all the flight cancellations, and she abandons bag drop and then reinstitutes a smaller, unsatisfactory drop without admitting error or re-designing the finishing area so as to have a party in the park by tavern on the green (e.g. sheep's meadow or to protect the grass there, the area east of Tavern over to the bandshell, with bags and food and drink, which is essentially what is done in the Tiergarten for Berlin and probably Grant Park? for Chicago, and Battery Park (Burlington) for Vermont City, etc.

What is with her face, like 0 fat and protruding cheekbones with mary wittenberg? was she a runner?

What about holding it on treadmills?

Just saw this - http://www.writingaboutrunning.com/2012/11/my-offer-to-nyc-marathon-runners.html?m=0

bummed marathoner wrote:

There are plenty of marathon's and half-marathons that can be doubled in the northeast this weekend and next just look here. I don't know which areas have been effected by the storm the most, and most likely most marathon's this weekend have been cancelled.

http://www.runningintheusa.com/Race/Default.aspx

Marathon's what ?

Azaleas wrote:

The real answer is that people just don't respect marathoning as a pro sport. Read the commentary, and people talk about a "silly marathon" or imply that the runners are all wimps. Nobody's saying anything like that about the NFL game, even though it's equally trivial. I'm sure the announcers will go on about the indomitable Spirit of New York, too.

Yep, and just look at how the decision came about. After the storm they announce that the marathon will be held and then let runners, pro or not, get to NYC and then on Friday reverse themselves completely and cancel it. This is not a sport run by real professionals. WMM isn't even a professional league, it's nothing more than a bonus structure. This is what we get for putting NYRR and Wittenberg up on a pedestal and this is why professional running trails other individual sports like pro tennis and pro golf, and by a long distance. Pun intended.