🏃‍♂️ How The Marathon Bonds Us All

The New York City Marathon attracts athletes from every walk of life, celebrating the pain of achievement. [View in browser]( [FOX SPORTS INSIDER WITH MARTIN ROGERS] In today’s FOX Sports Insider: Even athletes at the top of their sport find something to inspire them in the New York City Marathon ... Freddie Freeman finds a familiar trick-or-treater ... and Oregon gets a spotlight to show the country how good they are. It has been a long, long time since Olympic gold medalist Kikkan Randall entered a race she has no chance to win — long enough that she’s forgotten what it’s like. In a similar situation is Ryan Briscoe, who took the checkered flag eight times during his IndyCar career. “No, I definitely won’t be winning this race,” Briscoe told me in a telephone conversation ahead of Sunday’s TCS New York City Marathon. “Not in the traditional sense, anyway.” The clichéd response is that everyone who turns out to force their bodies and will their minds around 26.2 miles of the five boroughs is a winner. This magical race is an awe-inspiring mass of humanity, one that says much about the human spirit and perhaps even more about the way in which the Big Apple cherishes triumph in the face of adversity ... because after everything, why wouldn’t it? But what is the marathon experience like for athletes who have attained greatness in other sports? You can’t simply turn off the competitive spirit — not when it has been at the very core of your existence and formed the basis of your livelihood. What exactly are they competing against? “So many things,” Randall — who won the Olympic cross-country skiing team sprint with Jessica Diggins in Pyeongchang last year — told me. “You’re pushing yourself, your limitations, any restrictions on what you want your life to be. I got to be in New York last November and watched a couple of friends do their first marathon. You couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement. Then, when you start training over the summer, you realize: this is pretty daunting.” If it is daunting for Randall, a veteran of five Olympics and with a natural core of endurance fitness from her skiing career, you can imagine the challenge facing the estimated 38,000 who will brave the course stretching from Staten Island to Central Park this weekend. People come to the marathon in different ways. Randall has long harbored a dream to run the race but was further inspired to do so as she underwent treatment for breast cancer. Briscoe happened to be in New York two years ago and felt pangs of jealousy and admiration for the runners he saw trudging to their homes or hotels, huddled in heat-retention blankets but flushed with the glow of ultimate achievement. [STORY IMAGE 1] “That’s what I’m looking for,” Briscoe added. “That sense of pride of having finished it, of knowing it’s the culmination of all these months of preparation, of having reached something you didn’t know you could do, while having all these incredible strangers cheering you on. When I got a taste of it, that was it. I had to do it ... or at least try.” Briscoe raced in IndyCar for a decade and has spent the last four seasons on the WeatherTech Sports Car Championship circuit, for Ford Chip Ganassi Racing. Like Randall, he has won at every level of his sport. On Sunday, however, each will be just another runner among thousands of them. No head starts, no favors. Athletes who reach the top have something special about them, but the marathon is the ultimate leveler ... even to the point of what drives them to the race in the first place. When former world No. 1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki experienced a difficult breakup with her then-fiance Rory McIlroy in 2014, moving on meant, literally, moving on. “She had a very typical reaction, which was ‘(Expletive) this, I’m going to run the marathon,’” Matthew Futterman, deputy sports editor of The New York Times and the acclaimed author of the recently released Running to the Edge, told me. “In any marathon there are probably hundreds of people who are out there coming off a bad breakup. It’s a very cleansing, cathartic thing. They feel like (maybe) they were in a relationship that was codependent and ended badly and wanted to do something for themselves — and that is totally what Wozniacki did.” Futterman’s book explores the fascinating tale of revolutionary running coach Bob Larsen and an irreverent band of “hippie jocks” he rounded up in the 1970s and turned into champions. Futterman is a fine runner himself, with a best marathon time of 3 hours, 15 minutes and 58 seconds, but remembers Wozniacki breezing past him at the 19-mile mark and finishing three minutes ahead. The Danish tennis star’s longest “long” run in training was 12 miles. Most running coaches will tell you 18 is the bare minimum you need to be race ready. “I guess it turns out being a world-class athlete might actually help you run a marathon,” Futterman joked. “Who would have thought?” [STORY IMAGE 2] Marathon running has been in the spotlight recently, largely due to [the extraordinary sub-two-hour performance of Eliud Kipchoge in Vienna three weeks ago](. As mind-blowing as Kipchoge’s effort was, he was paced by both a car and a team of world-class runners, and accompanied by a huge support team. Those are luxuries unknown to everyone running in New York on Sunday. Randall, once recovered from her bouts of chemotherapy, had to balance training around travel and work. Briscoe sandwiched his long runs between racing and family commitments and had to take some time off from training in the final month because his body started grumbling at the workload. Both know that the mental battle will be crucial come race day. Runners must draw upon whatever is in their mind’s arsenal to get through the toughest stretches. “I’ve experienced what it feels like to feel awful and to be low,” Randall said. “When I’m out there on the course and it gets really tough, I’m going to remind myself that, unlike chemo, this kind of discomfort is a happy pain.” Briscoe will be buoyed by the thought of his wife Nicole, an ESPN SportsCenter host, and their children waiting for him at the finish. The running life means different things to different people. [For me in New York last year]( it was about proving that the age of 40 wasn’t my physical finish line, while remembering lost life and celebrating a new one. Each of Sunday’s runners has their own reasons, their own story. It is their own struggle, but one that is somehow shared with thousands over all those footfalls. If there is ever a time to forgive a cliché, it’s at the end of 26.2 miles. So while only one person crosses the line first … yeah, you get the picture. [STORY IMAGE 3] Here’s what others have said ... Martin Fritz Huber, Outside Magazine: “In matters of prestige, the New York City Marathon has always been the race — at least for the American distance running contingent. Yes, Boston has the historical pedigree and Chicago has a ripping fast course, but for overall opulence New York can’t be beat. It is the largest marathon in the world (not to mention the most expensive). It’s the race with all he celebrities. The start, which sends over 50,000 runners streaming, zombie-like, over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, feels less like a sporting event and more like a gazillion dollar Jerry Bruckheimer fantasy.” Nick Zaccardi, NBC Sports: “Unlike most first-time marathoners, Randall has actually competed in a longer distance. She skied her first 50km (31 miles) event in Wisconsin in February, taking 2 hours, 48 minutes. Randall trained through public speaking engagements all summer, including a Sunday long run on a Princess Cruises deck track — 87 laps to reach 12 miles. She tuned up for New York City by winning the female division of a half marathon in Kelowna, B.C., two weeks ago in 1:23:43, an hour north of her home. Her plan was to run closer to 1:30.” Pamela Cooper, Journal of Sports History: “Before the ‘marathon boom’ of the 1970s, marathoners were competitors who hoped, if not to win, at least place in the top ten or compete for age group awards. Marathon courses were often closed after four hours and the times of late finishers were unrecorded … New marathon runners often perceived the event less as a competition than as a ritual whose subjective reward was spiritual achievement.” [IN OTHER WORDS] - The Nationals spent big and won the World Series. [Zach Kram at]( Ringer]( wonders whether other teams will follow suit in an era emphasizing cost-controlled talent. - Everything about the Warriors’ start has been ugly, and Steph Curry’s broken hand all but ends any flickering hope for the season, [writes Tim Kawakami at]( [The Athletic](. - [Kevin Iole at]( [Yahoo Sports]( [posits]( that Canelo Alvarez, seeking a world title in his fourth weight class against Sergey Kovalev on Saturday, has been underrated as an all-time great fighter. [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED] [THE INTERNET IS UNDEFEATED]( As is the case every year, there were a lot of athletes in fantastic Halloween costumes, doing fantastic Halloween things. But one of the best things that happened this year was an athlete meeting someone in a costume. While Atlanta Braves All-Star Freddie Freeman and his wife Chelsea were out trick-or-treating with their son, they just happened to run into a child dressed as ... Freddie Freeman! Freddie was understandably tickled and made sure to stop and take a picture with the fan, although the fake Freddie was probably deeply torn — as all school-age kids would be — between meeting their hero and hustling to the next house, because maybe they’re giving away snack-size Snickers over there. [VIEWER'S GUIDE] Friday Night SmackDown (FOX, 8 p.m. ET) “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt is the new Universal Champion and Brock Lesnar vanquished his old nemesis Cain Velasquez. What will happen now that Survivor Series is a three-way competition between SmackDown, Raw, and NXT? No. 7 Oregon at USC (FOX, Saturday, 8 p.m. ET) The most intriguing PAC-12 matchup of Week 10 goes down on Saturday night. Can the Ducks climb even higher in the rankings? PBC Fight Night: Castaño vs. Omotoso (FS1, Saturday, 10:30 p.m. ET) Get your boxing fix late this week with a full fight card headlined by a showdown between two of the best 154-pounders in the sport. The preliminary fights begin on FS1 at 9 p.m. ET. Minnesota Vikings at Kansas City Chiefs (FOX, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET) The Chiefs have been struggling as of late, while the Vikings have been rolling. Patrick Mahomes is unlikely to be back in action this week, so the Chiefs might have another uphill climb at home. [BET OF THE DAY] [BET OF THE DAY] Odds provided by [FOX Bet]( Colin’s Marquee 3: Florida (+6.5), Washington (+3) & USC (+4.5): +650 We’ll let Colin himself explain, [from this week’s “Marquee 3” on The Herd]( “It’s a dog weekend. I’m taking upsets, and near upsets, in college football.” Indeed, Colin’s calling for Washington to win outright at home against a Utah team that he believes is “predictable” on offense, given how rarely they pass the ball. Meanwhile, Colin likes a USC team that’s just a different squad at home (8-1 in their last 9 games against ranked opponents at the Coliseum) to be able to beat Oregon deep and keep it close in a “wild, high-scoring game." [WHAT THEY SAID] “There is something magical about running; after a certain distance, it transcends the body. Then a bit further, it transcends the mind. A bit further yet, and what you have before you, laid bare, is the soul.” — Kristin Armstrong [FOLLOW FOX SPORTS] [Twitter]( [Facebook]( [YouTube]( [Instagram]( Download the FOX Sports app for live scores and streaming [App Store]( [Google Play]( Available on: [tvOS] [Roku] [fireTV] [androidtv] [XBOX] [Google chromecast] [tvOS] [Roku] [fireTV] [androidtv] [XBOX] [Google chromecast] Forwarded this message? [Sign up](. Trademark & Copyright Notice: ™ and © 2019 FOX Media LLC and FOX Sports Interactive Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Please do not reply to this message. If you do not wish to receive emails like this in the future, please [unsubscribe](. FOX Sports respects your privacy. Click [here]( to view our Privacy Policy. FOX.com Business & Legal Affairs - Manager Digital Media P.O. Box 900 Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900