and there you have it...

We have marathonned!
From the sidelines:

Brian performed phenomenally. He will post soon about his amazing experience and personal-best time, though I believe tonight's agenda was "icing and stretching." He was the first of all the Maasai Marathon team to cross the finish line, and we are all very proud.

The experience of cheering the runners on in Central Park in the last stretch was phenomenal itself. Wheelchair racers, runners of every imaginable nationality, intense halloween costumes, the sick and delirious, and men with bloody nipples frightfully staining their jerseys were just a few of the experiences that made the hours of yelling colorful and bearable.

Brian had four teams of support along the route: Fort Greene in Brooklyn (mile 14); 92nd and 1st in upper Manhattan, 92nd and 5th (mile 18), and our team at Central Park East around 74th (mile 24). We were able to follow his pacing and progress through text-message updates and on the internet with our phones, as well.

As we knew Brian was approaching, Team Mile 24 became quite anxious, looking for him... and looking... and looking...we almost missed him! He was nearly past us before a heroic yell came forth from one of our legion, and then we erupted. We were completely exhausted after that sixty seconds of emotional wailing, and panicked at the thought that we nearly missed him. It was then that we realized we despised the white jersey a little bit, whose generic color made picking out the MWCT runners quite difficult. Though finding runners within the horde is probably challenging regardless, it remained difficult to find the crew the entire afternoon, and we only were able to identify probably a third of the MWCT runners. There were definitely a few we were looking for and were quite sad to miss out on (Luca, Sunte- :( we so desperately wanted to yell for you! ).

Seeing the beleaguered troops dragging up the hill (we were mid-hill, the running looked painful at that point), you couldn't help wanting to encourage them, all tens of thousands of them... so we took to identifying people who either looked like they really needed support to keep them moving (or just those who clearly had their name displayed), and then gave them all we had. It was a good time, though completely exhausting after what ended up being four hours. We learned that Italians respond really well to having "Italia!" called out, the French like "Allez la France" maybe half the time, and Brazil responds pretty well, as do the Scandinavias, whereas Deutschland only really responded well at most, a third of the time (not an official study, just an observation under these circumstances). A couple of our team members are considering starting a business, "Say My Name," that strategically plants cheering sections for weary athletes to deliver needed support.

We were really pumped to see Parashi run through, but way later than he should have- his calves were killing him. The problem with taking mega-fast Kenyan runners from their environs in the Maasai wildlands and plopping them on the asphalt of Manhattan is the potential for shock. The asphalt was so unforgiving in comparison to what they normally run on that they switched from their Michelin Thousand Miler sandals to Puma running shoes, and their feet weren't accustomed to them. Samson's stress fracture prevented him from running. Hope this doesn't sour their experience here in the states at all.

The crew, all of them, were very honorable today, battling it out on with the pavement. And as of today the Maasai Marathon effort has raised well over seven hundred thousand dollars, now pushing eight hundred (can we make it more? Donate HERE). But Brian is the hero, first of the MWCT team to cross the finish line and represent us all. Yay! Continue to follow him, he's going places....