Every weekend during this fall marathon season, long after most runners have completed the 26.2-mile course -- and likely after many have showered, changed and headed for a meal -- a group of stragglers will cross the finish line.
Many of those slower runners, claiming that late is better than never, receive a finisher's medal just like every other participant. Having traversed the same route as the fleeter-footed runners -- perhaps in twice the amount of time -- they get to call themselves marathoners.
And it's driving some hard-core runners crazy.
"It's a joke to run a marathon by walking every other mile or by finishing in six, seven, eight hours," said Adrienne Wald, 54, the women's cross-country coach at the College of New Rochelle, who ran her first marathon in 1984. "It used to be that running a marathon was worth something. There used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore. Now it's, 'How low is the bar?'"
Tens of thousands of runners are training for marathons this time of year, including Raleigh's City of Oaks Marathon on Nov. 1. As the fields continue to grow, primarily by adding slower runners, so has the intensity of the debate over how quickly an able-bodied runner should finish.
Purists believe that running a marathon should be just that: running the entire course at a relatively fast clip. They point out that a six-hour marathoner is simply participating in the event, not racing in it. Slow runners have disrespected the distance, they say, and have ruined the marathon's mystique.
Slower marathoners believe that covering the 26.2 miles is the crux of the accomplishment, no matter the pace. They say that marathons inspire people to get off their couches, if only to cross off an item on the Things to Do Before I Die list, and that slow runners drive the business.
John Bingham, a runner known as the Penguin, is often credited with starting the slow running movement in the 1990s. "I have had people say that I've ruined the sport of running, but what I've been trying to do is promote the activity of running to an entire generation of people," he said. "What's wrong with that?"
Bingham added: "The complainers are just a bunch of ornery, grumpy people who want the marathon all to themselves and don't want the slower runners. But too bad. The sport is fueled and funded by people like me."
Trends show that marathon finishers are getting slower and slower and more prevalent, according to Running USA, a nonprofit organization that tracks trends in distance running. From 1980 to 2008, the number of marathon finishers in the United States increased to 425,000 from 143,000.
In 1980, the median finishing time for male runners in U.S. marathons was 3 hours, 32 minutes, 17 seconds, a pace of about eight minutes per mile. In 2008, the median finishing time was 4:16, a pace of 9:46. For women, that time in 1980 was 4:03:39. Last year, it was 4:43:32.
"If you're wearing a marathon T-shirt, that doesn't mean much anymore," longtime marathoner Julia Given, 46, said on the eve of this month's Baltimore Marathon, where vendors were selling products that celebrate slower runners. One sticker said, "I'm slow. I know. Get over it."
"I always ask those people, 'What was your time?' If it's six hours or more, I say, 'Oh great, that's fine, but you didn't really run it,'" said Given, a marketing director from Charlottesville, Va., who finished the Baltimore race in 4:05:52. "The mystique of the marathon still exists. It's the mystique of the fast marathon."
