Curiosity 21: Marathons

Last year at this time I posted about a work day, helping out the Big Sur Marathon folks after the annual half-marathon here on the Monterey Peninsula. Today we did it all over again, a dozen and a half of us, unloading some six or seven trucks; schlepping signs, sandbags, boxes of Gu, of cups, of shirts, even a small plastic swimming pool (don't ask me...); washing, rinsing, and drying coolers and pitchers—and more—all while Christian danced around us in his forklift. Here are some photos (though if you came here for marathons more generally, keep scrolling):

After we were done, Mike Chamberlain, the executive director of the Ventana Wilderness Alliance (pictured below), took us hardworking VWA volunteers out for a celebratory round. Job well done!

I learned today that the set-up/tear-down and put-away crew—Christian (who is on the far left in the above group photo) and a handful of others—actually specialize in marathons: local ones, like the San Francisco and Napa, but also more farflung ones. They'd just gotten back from New York, whose marathon, involving 50,000 runners, was held last week. There, Christian said, they are a ten-person crew and all they do is signage. There are many other teams that take care of all the other logistics surrounding such a large event. (Our little affair today was a mere 9,000, while the full Big Sur Marathon, held every April, is only 4,500.)

Now, that is a specialized job description: marathon forklift operator and master warehouse organizer.

But that got me wondering about marathons generally—as in, how many are there, that these folks can make a full-time career out of them?

Ha ha, the answer: oh so many! The rest of this month alone in the full marathon category according to marathonguide.com (which seems to be but a partial list, given that the US is noticeably absent):

The British website marathonrunnersdiary.com has tabs for international marathons, UK marathons, European marathons, and half-marathons (in the UK only, but in eight regions). And on that website? The only US marathons listed are the Chicago and New York—apparently the Big Sur International Marathon doesn't rate. Nor the Boston! What?

For the US alone, one can refer to Running in the USA. There.

The website worldsmarathons.com organizes its listings by "destinations": want to visit Spain and maybe do a race while you're there—18 options! (And once you click on the link, you're treated to many more possibilities.) The site also details half-marathons, 10Ks, 5Ks, ultras, trail runs, and virtual runs. And if you want help with your planning, there are companies like Marathon Tours & Travel, "offering runners and their travel companions extraordinary destination experiences while exploring the seven continents one stride at a time."

If I were even the tiniest bit into running, I can see that these websites could get very dangerous, very quickly. A half-marathon every two weeks, in every time zone, yeah! An alphabet of marathons—Australia, Burundi, Cuba, Denmark...—sounds fun! A marathon at every ten degrees of latitude? Sure!

Seriously: there's a 100K ultra in Antarctica coming up next month, at 80 degrees South, and a North Pole Marathon—I kid you not!—next April. It's totally possible: every ten degrees of latitude, near enough. Heck, you could probably make it every five degrees, or maybe even two. 

A marathon in every country—that's gotta be possible! And yes, in fact, it was done in 2018–19 by one Nick Butter, who wrote a book about his experience: his goal was 196 marathons over 18 months, all in support of prostate cancer research. It ended up taking him 674 days. He then went on to run 200 marathons over the course of 100 days in Britain. That sort of obsessiveness I find hard to fathom, but good on him, I guess?

Wikipedia says there are over 800 marathons organized worldwide every year. 

And I will leave this at that. I'm exhausted!