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SAM SHAW?Run like fire once more:
Chasing perfection at the world's longest... |
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Contributed by Sam Shaw
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The runners slog past a bivouac of plastic card tables and folding chairs, past electric-green Port-O Lets ripe with disinfectant, past indifferently groomed hedges and the redbrick facade of Thomas A. Edison Vocational and Technical High School. At the corner of 168th Street, they cut north to the Grand Central Parkway, the course rising gently as trucks and cars rocket by. The concrete apron is a blinding white line. They pass illegally parked cars, wipers festooned with tickets. Trash has blown into the grass of Joseph Austin park, named for Mario Cuomo?s childhood baseball coach. Here are silent handball and basketball courts, and a playground where sprinklers throw a flume across a midway empty of children. Alone or in twos or threes, the runners pass the hydrants and trash cans of 164th Place, moving southward to Abigail Adams Avenue and thence east a half-block under shade trees to the row of card tables, where women jot notes on clipboards, like a delegation of Green Party poll watchers. At a comfortable pace, you can walk the loop in about ten minutes. The course of the world?s longest footrace measures .5488 miles. . . .
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