Last weekend, the Chicago Marathon was brought to a forcible halt by police cars and helicopters ordering marathoners to finish the rest of the race at a walk. This happened because Chicago was experiencing record-high temperatures, and many runners were passing out cold on the trail from heat exhaustion. One runner, a man from Michigan, even went as far as to die.
People here in Chicago were outraged at how race logistics could be handled so poorly that someone actually died at a marathon. Citizens continue to be outraged that the Chicago Marathon people and their magnanimous sponsor, LaSalle Bank, could put marathon runners in danger. That logic is, in a word, fucking idiotic.
It's a marathon.
Let's examine the word marathon. Marathon is the name of a town in Greece. After the Greeks defeated the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, a Greek soldier named Pheidippides ran from Marathon to Athens, some say completely barefoot, to announce their victory. He ran the entire distance without stopping, proclaimed the message, and then dropped dead.
That's a marathon. The word has literally synonymous with long, impossible tasks. If you have a marathon lovemaking session, or a marathon meeting, does that not imply that your meeting or lovemaking went outrageously long? Longer than it should? So when you run a marathon this means that you are running longer than most people do.
Most people don't run five miles in a day. Most people don't run three blocks in a day. But a marathon runner runs 26.2 miles. It is simultaneously amazing and completely preposterous. Like sticking your head in the mouth of a lion, running a marathon mixes the superhuman and the idiotic into an extreme brew that always captures the imagination.
We live in a litigious world, and as such people feel justified in not taking responsibility for their actions. Whether it is a hot cup of coffee in one's lap or a pair of headphones that cause ear damage at full volume, people who are otherwise champions of civil liberties feel completely comfortable with asking big brother to pick up the slack for their lack of common sense.
But the marathon is, literally, a marathon. Part of its very definition is the story of someone dropping dead after doing it. Pheidippides didn't have pavement, or water, or cross-trainers. The only Nike Pheiddipides knew about was the statue in the Acropolis.
Let's say I mentioned this over brunch: "Hey, I just got into this great new sport. It's called 'Thermopylae.' You put on a loincloth and fight your friends to the death with spears. It's a real rush." If next week you discovered that I missed brunch because I was eviscerated and my head shoved onto a spear, would you sue the Thermopylae league on behalf of my family? Of course not. The danger of the sport was implicit in its name. The same goes for a marathon.
We live in an age where giving everyone the chance to do everything is morally just. Americans have really embraced this "everyone is a winner" attitude to the fullest. It is true that everyone who runs a marathon has done an amazing thing. But everyone is not a winner. This does not mean that the weak of body or mind should be carted away and sterilized. Everyone should be allowed to do everything. I should be allowed to play tackle football and study physics. But will I play for the NFL and become a full professor at MIT? Of course not. Those of us who are less equipped to do those things should accept the consequences of failure.
And, as perverse as it is, a marathon would not be a marathon if you couldn't die doing it. A marathon would not be as exciting and life changing if it weren't so physically demanding that you might keel over at the end. Runners usually don't consider Kant part of their training regimen, but the marathon does have elements of the sublime.
People should be allowed to run themselves to death. People should be allowed to run themselves to whatever level of physical harm they want. If it gets hot, people should not be forced to stop. Adults should not be shielded from the real consequences of their actions.
That this point even needs to be argued is significant in itself. It's no wonder that we gorge ourselves on TV shows about extreme sports and dangerous jobs. It's no wonder we love Fear Factor and Ice Truckers and Jackass so intensely. It's no wonder that men and women alike were so titillated by the story of 300. It is because, in every other moment of our life, we are prevented from walking right up to death and shaking its hand. Even during the marathon.