Itching to Run a Marathon
A few thoughts on the Boston Marathon coverage on ESPN2
This past Monday I tuned in to watch the Boston Marathon. If a marathon is being shown on TV or live-streamed somewhere, you can bet I’ll be watching because I love running and enjoy watching marathons, and I apologize if this sounds a bit ranty, but this ESPN2 coverage was less than stellar.
Dear ESPN2…
If there is anything you could change or improve upon with the Boston Marathon coverage, it’s showing where these runners are on the course. As I sat there watching the incredibly fast elite professional runners, I kept asking myself, where are they?!
On Monday morning around 7 AM (my time), I was neither in the mood nor had the mental energy to compute the math to find out where, or how far these runners were.
Ok, if they’re running an average pace of 5:16 and 43 minutes into the race, umm add the 1 carry the 2…I don’t know, are they at mile 18?? Halp.
Aside from that, why must you cut away for commercials when an actual race is going on? ESPN2, show your commercials, but could you please keep a picture-in-picture split screen for both the women's and men's races? You could even tack on a third screen to show everyone else in the field.
Why not start the coverage an hour before the race starts? Don’t begin your coverage at 9:00 AM with the men’s wheelchair race beginning at 9:06 AM and the women’s wheelchair race at 9:09 AM.
If coverage for the Super Bowl can start 8 hours before the Super Bowl, what’s an extra 30 to 60 minutes for a marathon?
If you need some ideas on how to use that extra time, show some human interest stories of first-time marathoners and charity runners, or first-time Boston Marathon participants in general.
You can include a few professionals discussing their first Boston or what could be their last because oh I don’t know, maybe there’s an elite runner who is retiring from road racing and heading into the world of trails and ultras (or maybe you didn’t know that at the time).
You could discuss ways people participate and the reasons why some people are taking on this huge, monumental physical challenge, and find out what their training was like. I love hearing about everyday runners (like myself) who decide they want to complete a marathon, or their 100th!
Yes, the elite pros are great and I enjoy seeing them compete, but they make up a very small percentage of the 31,000+ participants, and while we can learn some things from them, there are many more of us non-elite runners who do not relate to their training, or their speed.
You could profile older runners and people who have dealt with adversity and hardships. Talk to them about how running has possibly helped them cope and overcome challenges that others might be facing as well.
ESPN2, you have a chance to broaden the scope here. You could be inspiring people of all ages and backgrounds to start thinking about running (or being more active), even if it’s just around the block.
Overall, I wasn’t impressed with the national broadcast (I’m sure ESPN2 is crying buckets of salty tears over my thoughts), and next year I’ll try and watch the local WCVB broadcast. Although I don’t believe I can since I’m not local to that area. In my opinion, the coverage for the Chicago and New York marathons is vastly superior. I’d even go so far as to say the local television coverage on KTLA for the LA Marathon was significantly better.
All the Boston Marathon coverage did was just not inspire me to run it (neither does LA), but the coverage for Chicago and New York does.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t like to run Boston one day, I definitely would, but the desire to run Boston isn’t as strong as my desire to run London or Berlin or another less popular non-World Major marathon.
The Finish Line
Speaking of London, it is one marathon that I would love to run, and the ballot for the 2026 TCS London Marathon is now open.
As I’ve done several times now, I threw my name in the lottery hat and maybe this time I’ll be picked for it. Or maybe not. Chances are extremely good that I won’t be selected and I’ll be drinking some of those salty tears from receiving another rejection yet again. Looks like we’ll find out in July. If you’ve entered the lottery, good luck as well!
Regardless of how London turns out, I have an itch to run another marathon, and I didn’t need to watch Boston to know that because it’s already there, and I think I’m ready to scratch it.
If you watched the Boston Marathon, what did you think about it? Did it inspire you to run a marathon, run another one, take up running, or any other thoughts on it? Let me know in the comments!