The Wildest Race Ever: The Story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon by Meghan Mccarthy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Whoo! Okay, this is the story of America’s first marathon, but it reads more like a script for an episode of Wacky Races.
Someone vomits in the first mile. Another dude steals a bunch of peaches from some spectators and runs away to eat them. The race doctor falls off a cliff. A racer is chased a mile off course by a dog.
Okay, then the leading runner is begging for water, but his trainers will only give him, get this, strychnine. Yep. Because they figured it would make him run faster, and of course, being old times, they combined it with an egg white. And then they do it again. And then they give him a warm sponge bath in the Missouri heat!
And this man won the race in 3 hours, 28 minutes.
Now, please know I’m not bragging. Quite the opposite. I ran a marathon in 3 hours and 25 minutes! Haha! Take that, first marathon winner ever! Then I had a margarita and fell down some stairs, after which I spent the evening at some clothing-optional hot springs where the only naked people were me and a very old local man who complained that the race screwed up the arrival of his mail. And THAT is why we run. Not for the stickers on Subarus or the desire to keep up with water bottle technology. Nope, for the humiliation and old man nudity.
I was pretty proud of myself as I read this, until I thought about the fact that I ran about as fast as a dude who drank no water and instead consumed RAT POISON MIXED WITH EGG. TWICE. I mean, that’s like if I stabbed myself with 5 miles to go, just to up the ante or something.
People were hardcore back then.