Marathoners are compelled to conquer the distance

A marathon is 26.2 miles, and it is a standard tens of thousands of amateur runners have felt compelled to conquer. I watch people watch me when I tell them I’ve run a couple.
They look me up and down and usually say, ”Really, that’s amazing.” Sunday, May 17, is the Christiana Care Health System Delaware Marathon Running Festival.

There is also a half-marathon and Plexus Fitness/Empowered Yoga four-person relay race. Joel Schiller, meet director, is expecting 600 runners for the marathon and 600 for the half. The four-person relay is limited to 200 teams. Email Joel at JSchiller@artisansbank.com for details and entry information.

A SPECIAL THANKS - Angel Cabrera, an Argentine national, won the green jacket at The Masters in a two-hole playoff catching all those over-the-top, nauseating announcers totally flat because Cabrera just steps up and whacks the ball taking the mystery and poetry out of the moment. In his speech through a translator after receiving the green jacket, Angel said, ”I’d like to thank the three most important people to me, my manager, my coach and also my cat. And I don’t want to forget my family.” I thought it was the greatest shout-out of all time until I realized he thanked his caddie, not his cat, because thanking a cat on that stage would change the way the entire world looked at cats.

LEWES PIRATES – The old Lewes high school mascot was the pirates and who would have thought in the new millennium that pirates would make such a comeback. Easter Sunday was strange as somewhere between The Masters tournament and the Phillies beating the Colorado Rockies on a Matt Stairs ninth-inning two-run “Jack” there was jubilation over the freeing of Capt. Richard Phillips and the waxing of three Somali pirates by Navy SEAL snipers. Sure I was happy, but no “Kool and the Gang” celebration song on Easter for three dogged-in-the-night teenagers.

There is a touch of irony for an authentic African-American president approving the mission while the ship Alabama sits in a Kenyan port. The snipers had attacked the U.S.-flagged cargo ship Maersk Alabama written in big letters on the side. Regardless of language spoken, reading the word Alabama should have been enough to turn the pirate boat 180 degrees. In the words of Groucho Marks, “In Africa they hunt elephants but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.”

NORTH POLE MARATHON - Thirty-eight runners from 14 countries completed the North Pole Marathon last weekend, which proves it: You set up a physical challenge no matter how pointless, the goal-oriented sect will show up for it. The race was won by an acclimatized Russian in four hours and 20 minutes. Dry and cold weather requires lots of water stops but when the temperature and wind chill is minus 35, how is that accomplished? Eating snow “watch out where the Huskies go” doesn’t work. Have you ever lapped water from a puddle in the middle of a 10-mile run? I have, having learned from retrievers that all the dirt settles on the bottom.

SNIPPETS - Mark in red on your wall calendar April 22 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Bob Evans; 15 percent of the proceeds go to the Cape baseball boosters. Just tell them you’re there for Cape baseball otherwise you’re just another omelet-eating tourist. Try the Ty Cobb Salad Special chased by a Georgia Peach. Usain Bolt admitted he sampled marijuana as a young boy, saying “everyone in Jamaica learns how to roll a joint,” but now he doesn’t hang out with people who smoke all the time. Usain, three-time Olympic gold medalist, was interviewed by Bild newspaper inside a Kingston disco. The online interview said he was drinking Guinness and Red Bull. You know the Beer, Bull, Bolt alliteration will become a favorite summer drink for those who can’t break 15 seconds in the 100 meters. Speaking of Jamaican sprinters, the last weekend in April is the running of the Penn Relays at Franklin Field, and there is an inversion phenomena as a low cloud of secondhand marijuana smoke seemed to circle the stadium for hours on Saturday afternoon. Everyone who stays all day leaves at 6 p.m. sounding like a reggae poet, “Me belly full but me hungry.” Athletes should remember that colstop at the guidance office. And quite often that is where it ends. Great grades and strong SAT’s make a gifted athlete look superb and may translate to admission into the more prestigious schools, but getting free money is a bit of a shell game. This Sunday, April 19, at Cape Henlopen High School, the first Run for Education 5 and 10K and mile walk will take place. Proceeds go to the Cape Henlopen Educational Foundation. Personally, I endorse their endeavor. Years ago I emceed the Cape Capers variety show for the same organization prompting Superintendent Suellen Skeen to send a memo to the high school: “Never let Dave Frederick near a microphone ever again.” Between the Wonder Woman and Invisible Man joke and the Cape May-Lewes Fairy routine, I moved from cutting edge to over the line.