26.2 miles that I didn't run!

Today was the NYC Marathon! The race course goes right past our workplace on 1st Avenue, and we went down to check out the runners. They start off the "elite women" 35 minutes before everyone else, and so they were the first to come through. It was amazing. There were about 10 women all in a pack, running sooooo fast. Then there were many other fast women all spread out. Did you know that the top prize for women in this year's marathon is $160,000, and that is $35,000 more than what the top man got? I think maybe it is to compensate them for giving up their reproductive years.

Here is the woman who won - Jelena Prokopcuka



And the man, Paul Tergat:



And look at these extremely attractive winners of the wheelchair race - I missed them going by. He looks kind of like a cartoon of Frenchman actually. Is he French? Oh, no I just checked and he's South African. That would be Edith Hunkeler (Swiss) and Ernst Van Dyk.



I love watching other people exert themselves. Within five minutes of getting to the sidelines, I was craving a meal at McDonald's, which is extremely rare for me. I really wanted a hamburger, with those little minced onions that are so so cute.

Also, there is the joy of awarding many different championships. Of course, there are the people who are actually in first place in the category of male and female. But there are many other categories to be awarded (by me) such as:

1. First Woman Who Didn't Start with the Elite Women.

2. First Guy with a Beard. Big deal, as there was a general lack of hair in evidence.

3. First Guy in a Costume (he was a cow and looked awfully hot and sweaty, poor thing).

4. First Guy with No Shirt On. (This guy was actually someone that we knew and were looking out for, he works in our old grad school lab and I think he really was the first no shirted man).

5. First Guy in Drag. I'm sure there was one, but I didn't get to see him this year. We had to go back to work. :(

We had a good time yelling out the names of the people who put their names on their shirts, especially the ones who were running to raise money for cancer research at our workplace. At one point, a French guy went by with his name written on his shirt - Leon - and the girl next to us yells, GO LEEEE-AWWWN. All American-accenty like. And Isaac kind of cringed. (I don't know if the French guy cared or not.) Isaac's a pronunciation-snob (it's by nature and nurture, his dad's a linguist). So I assigned him the task of yelling only for the people with the most foreign-looking names. Like Bishek, and Toine, and Jelena. Well, he didn't get to cheer for Jelena, because we didn't know her name back then, and the top women don't have their names on their shirts.

So, I resisted the McDonald's with their little minced onions, and now I'm making glazed cipollini onions, yum. They had better be good since I sacrificed some good red drinking wine toward the cause.

Hope that everyone had a great weekend.