No goals, field goal posts, or soccer balls here...

...just a Start and a Finish line.

Thanks to UniversalSports.com I was able to tune into the live feed of todays New York City Marathon this morning. I started watching with the woman's Elite field already at the six mile marker and Paula Radcliffe in the lead.

I'd never thought much about watching road racing prior to training for the Chicago Marathon. As a fan of watching the Olympic games, I would catch the marathon on TV, but didn't care too much for it. Having run Chicago, I now have a deep respect for the distance of the marathon. Knowing what I know about what it takes to complete the distance, the sport has become rather exciting to watch.

The elite runners that compete in this sport are nothing short of superheros to me. These are people who live and breathe competitive racing, and yet they too can have a bad day running in a marathon. The distance will swallow you alive, spit you back out and show no mercy whatsoever. Watching an elite field start in bunches only to dwindle down to just one winner at the end is exciting to watch- more so than I ever thought!

The NYC Marathon matched this excitement in every way possible with some incredible finishes by Britain's Paula Radcliffe and Brazil's Gomez dos Santos. I literally couldn't peel myself away from watching it.