See NYC Marathon 2007 — “Armstrong's marathon finish latest headline in strange week,” Nov. 4, 2007
Congratulations, Sergio Pinzon of New Jersey. You finished just ahead of the winningest-ever Tour de France bicycle racer in his inaugural attempt at a 26.2-mile footrace.
Lance Armstrong met his goal of achieving an under 3-hour marathon on Sunday at the ING New York City Marathon by finishing in 2 hours, 59 minutes and 36 seconds. For those who time themselves at shorter distances, that's a 6:51 per mile average.
You can chalk it up as another case of Armstrong setting a high-end goal for himself and achieving it.
Armstrong ran with 38,000 other runners in the annual race through the streets of New York City. The 35-year-old Texan finished in 856th place (later official results placed him in 869th). He told the Associated Press:
“For the level of condition that I have now, that was without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done. I never felt a point where I hit the wall, it was really a gradual progression of fatigue and soreness.”
He took up the run partly to memorialize the 10-year anniversary (Oct. 2, 1996) of learning that he had cancer. His beating the disease has launched him as an iconic hero among many and led to the creation of the successful Lance Armstrong Foundation.
The winner of this year's marathon was Marilson Gomes dos Santos of Brazil, who finished in 2:09:58. The top female runner was Jelena Prokopcuka of Latvia, finishing in 2:25:05. Full marathon results are here.
Sunday not only marked Armstrong's first marathon race, but the first time he'd ever run the distance. He told USA Today that his longest run has been 16 miles and that his shins were hurting him.
Armstrong ran with an entourage during his first-ever marathon, with several helping set a pace for Armstrong. That's 1994 NYC Marathon champion German Silva running with Armstrong in the picture above. Others can be seen sporting yellow wristband and yellow LiveStrong caps.
Also joining Armstrong, according to the Paceline fan site, was 3-time winner Alberto Salazar, 1984 Olympic marathon champion Joan Benoit Samuelson. Retired Moroccan middle distance runnere Hicham El Guerrouj (King of the Mile) helped set the pace at Armstrong neared the finish in Central Park.
Shoe sponsor Nike made the most of Armstrong's marathon run, including a 10-story-high billboard in Times Square promoting its “Run with Lance” program. The program raises funds for the Livestrong foundation through the use of shoes that utilize the Nike-plus technology of recording training workouts.
In conjunction with the marathon, Nike also released its new line of yellow running shoes equipped with Nike-plus, according to the SlamHype blog.
Picture above from rob5408 at flickr.com.
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