Boston Marathon Coverage - Local

Anyone else sifting through the Boston Marathon results looking for the, oh, I don't know, 30 or so local runners from your city?

I am.

Not. Cool.

 

Check that list several times. Miss somebody, and the phone will be ringing tomorrow.

Good luck, it's not any fun.

 

Don't I know it. I can't find a few people who said they were entered last week. But I found everyone else.

Doesn't hardly seem worth it when the best finisher is something like 2,000th.

 

Their Web site makes looking pretty easy, doesn't it? Or is it only easy after the race is completely finished?

 

I covered the marathon one year for a paper in eastern Connecticut. Worked maybe 18 hours and worked my butt off.

I missed one local runner, and his wife called me at 6:30 a.m. to scream at me about how her husband had worked so hard, and I had slighted him.

It was always a big deal with us, because we'd had three local winners -- Tarzan Brown, Amby Burfoot (who won 40 years ago this week) and Johnny Kelley The Younger.

We had/have a running columnist who would do an edvance, and we'd make iut clear to people if they wanted to make sure we included them, they needed to call us after 5 p.m.

 

I just went through our state list off the wire. Shift-down key is my friend.

 

Yeah. I'm having trouble locating a few racers. I don't know if it's because they a) didn't end up running or b) are taking nine hours to finish.

And, even though I typed in my city in the proper field, it only returned 10 names, but we had 16 entered. I'm not sure why it missed six. I found them via their last name. And even then, when the searched returned their names, our city showed in the proper field. Weird.

 

We didn't have space for more than a brief in the paper.

I knew some local coaches were running Boston, so I put their results on my BLOG! I also scrolled through the 500-plus names and picked out a few others who I recognized -- two school superintendents, a high school teacher, and one of the news-side copy editors -- so I added their titles and finish times.

I also mentioned the one local woman who competed in the Olympic Trials marathon on Sunday.

I hope I don't hear from anybody who wasn't listed, since I included maybe 10 of the dozens of locals who finished Boston. But then again, if I do it means my BLOG! (which isn't even a month old) has actually attracted readers! :

 

Did you have a separate regular marathon story or no?

Of course, I do not know the size of your paper or where you are.

In New England, in my experience, it's always the overall story and a sidebar on local runners.

Sounds like you took a good tack.

 

The thing is, aside from coverage of the elite runners, the Marathon is not even a Sports story. It should be covered by Lifestyles/Features writers. I can tell you that few in the Boston area give a crap about the marathon, and the coverage is way out of proportion to the amount of interest it generates.

 

Getting the results from locals was MUCH easier for this race than it is for others. All you have to do is search under the cities and towns in your coverage area or just look through the list of finishers in your state.

Having run Boston and seen the support throughout the course, I can't disagree more about the interest in the Boston area. I found the area was very much interested in the race. The only other race that I've run that had more support throughout the course was New York.

 

You're correct about the support along the race route. Can't argue that. Journalistically, I just think that people aren't interested in reading the endless stories about the race. I think it's more of an event that transcends sports.