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Race still 26.2 miles, Marathon event gets longer - The Associated Press

Published by
Shane   Apr 19th 2009, 10:42pm
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BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Marathon is getting longer.

Not the race — it remains at 26.2 miles for its 113th edition Monday — but the event that traditionally takes over the Boston streets on Patriots Day has spilled into the weekend with a fun run and competitive miles designed to keep the captive running community busy.

"Other cities have marathons; we have marathon weekend," Boston Mayor Tom Menino said Sunday after holding the winner's tape at the Back Bay finish line of the first Boston Athletic Association Invitational Mile. "When you hear it's marathon weekend, you know it's spring here in Boston — even though the calendar may say something else."

Defending champion Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya will go for his fifth Boston Marathon title, and Dire Tune of Ethiopia will try to repeat as the women's winner in the world's longest-running annual marathon. Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher are the top U.S. man and woman in their respective fields — contenders for titles that haven't gone to an American in decades.

Joining them at the Hopkinton starting line will be more than 25,000 other runners, many of them out-of-towners who make the marathon the centerpiece of a weekend in Boston.

This year their families had a chance to be more than spectators.

In a sold-out 5K on Sunday morning, 4,000 runners from 36 countries got onto the course for the experience of sprinting down Boylston Street to the finish. Among them: 1983 men's winner Greg Meyer — the last American to win the men's race here — and Joan Benoit Samuelson, an Olympic gold medalist and two-time Boston winner.

"I just think it makes it more festive," said Benoit Samuelson, who finished.....



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