Marathon distance is scary - even for pros

It turns out that they're all on the Titanic together. Weekend road-race warriors and finely tuned professional champions, facing the 26.2 miles of Sunday's New York City Marathon for the first time, share a similar sinking feeling. It is a long way to run, even for the running elite.

Of the roughly 45,000 expected at the starting line, more than 20,000 never have run the distance before - and that includes Shalane Flanagan, who holds American records at distances up to 10,000 meters.

"I'm not intimidated by the competition," said Flanagan, considered a contender in a field that includes defending champion Derartu Tutu of Ethiopia, reigning Boston Marathon champ Teyba Erkesso of Ethiopia, former Boston champ Salina Kosgei of Kenya and former New York winner Ludmila Petrova of Russia. "It's purely the distance.

"It's a brutal distance," said Flanagan, the daughter of former world-class runner Cheryl Treworgy, and, at 29, with an Olympic 10,000-meter bronze medal among her trophies. "People probably aren't really meant to run it, so you're really pushing your body to do something that it really doesn't want to do. You have to fight every urge not to want to do it."

Dathan Ritzenhein, now 27, has been setting track and cross-country records since he was a high school sophomore in Michigan. Yet, in his first marathon experience - in New York four years ago - he "completely hit the wall at 20 miles," and admitted, "You still get scared; that stuff never goes away."

He could win this year - his personal-best 2:10:00 at last year's London Marathon puts him in the mix with the likes of world record-holder Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia and American Meb Keflezighi, the reigning New York champion. But he can identify with the first-timer, how it is "a little daunting" to race a distance never reached in training.

"Because," he said, "you can't ultimately simulate the marathon because, if you were to simulate that , it probably would do more damage than good; that would really beat you up."

Chicago native Jorge Torres, seventh here last year in his marathon debut, remembered being "scared" by the bathroom situation before that race. "What do I do if I actually have to go - No. 1 or, worse, No. 2?" he said. "That's the competitive edge you think about because you don't want to lose ground to your competitor if you have to stop."

Being a former high school and college cross country champion and 2008 Olympian at 10,000 meters doesn't make Torres any less human than those 20,000 amateurs attempting their first marathon Sunday. "For the average runner, 26.2 miles is very intimidating," he said. "Even to us professionals. You've got to respect that distance."

Still, the allure of the marathon is the same for the pros as for the Everyman and Everywoman who will be pounding the pavement in this annual running of the humans through Gotham.

"I have a lot of pep talks that I've stored up in my head for those moments," Flanagan said, "and there's going to be multiple moments where I'm going to say, 'Why am I doing this? This is really painful.' "

The answer she long ago settled on, she said, is: "Because I want to be a marathoner, desperately. I want to say, 'I ran a marathon.' Regardless of the pace or the time, I want to be able to say, 'I'm a marathoner.'

"It's very simple. We all pretty much have the same goal on the starting line, to be honest."