Marathon, the fetish – 04/16/2024 – No Corre

The algorithm provided me with dozens of photos of amateurs with medals from the Boston Marathon, which took place this Monday (15).

In fact, if even a 5-kilometer medal at the Circuito das Estações is a reason for jubilation and selfies, what can we say about the marathon of marathons, the century-old and very competitive Boston, which requires the candidate to pass a preliminary entrance exam to participate, that is, to prove to the organizers for completing a minimum time in another marathon?

And this minimum time is no cakewalk. Depending on the age group, totally impractical.

With all this, running 42K in Boston, São Paulo, Berlin, Olinda, Paris, Sorocaba, Chicago, Foz do Iguaçu, wherever, is nothing more than a fetish.

Fetish, really fetish, worthy of a David Cronenberg film. If he ran dressed in vinyl from head to toe, the marathon runner probably wouldn’t raise eyebrows.

The thing is, in the imagination of the world of amateur running, whoever completes the race one day gains another status, automatically becomes a kind of demigod, having apparently fulfilled a challenge, therefore, semi-divine (or at least superhuman).

I myself, who completed ten marathons, am called a “journalist and marathon runner” by my friend Ricardo Capriotti, anchor of the radio program Fôlego, in which I participate.

If running 42K involves quite reasonable doses of physical and especially mental resistance, this requirement is far from being, for example, the challenge of a half Iron (I might not be able to swim half of the 1,900 meters required); or even a 90K ultra, like the very famous Comrades, in South Africa.

But that’s not exactly what I mean: what I mean is that, depending on the limitations of each amateur, running a 10K on a stick, for example, can be much more challenging than the marathon itself done at a “flirty” pace. .

The ease with which some distance lovers add marathons to their resume proves this. And, apparently, the older the better: Nilson Lima from Uberlandia, the city whose marathon pays tribute to him, completed his 355th in Boston. He started running at the age of 45, exactly two and a half decades ago.

Nilsão, who doesn’t shy away from stopping in the middle of the race to take photos with his admirers and friends –disclosure: my case–, perhaps he would call it a marathon, if that meant suffering for him, the weight training and pilates sessions he does when he’s not there running.

The fetish feeds on itself because many amateur running coaches and commentators treat the marathon with devotional respect. In the race advisories, there is a training calendar for the 42K that takes practically a semester for the unwary.

In one of the four marathons I ran in São Paulo, I heard the famous and hideous phrase from a gravel colleague, when the people from the 8K, or something like that, turned around and left the peloton: “Now the men separate themselves from the boys.”

No, friend: there are no limits to athletic challenges, and the marathon can be, for many people, less challenging than the 8K for those beginners. And certainly less challenging, for me, than the 1.9K half-Iron crawl.

And if we were to transpose the discussion to the moral sphere, that’s where the fetish would perhaps be realized more perfectly, with the marathon becoming a whim, some sort of fixation, like expensive wines for Kakay or the number 7 for my dear brother-in-law Edgar, that God has.

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