NYC Marathon promotes a running addiction

With Sunday's annual Running of the Humans -- as many as 47,000 of them -- through Big Town's five boroughs while up to 2 million others line the streets to watch, New York City Marathon officials are angling to get even more people hooked on this ambulatory activity.

"Definitely, we are zealots," race director Mary Wittenberg said. "Hopefully, the biggest advocates of running. We believe 110 percent in what we espouse."

For this year's 26-mile, 385-yard race, New York's 42nd, the organizing New York Road Runners have rolled out a Run for Life "manifesto" calling on all citizens to "run for the rush, run to be strong . . . run off dessert, run to like yourself better in the morning . . . run to keep your thighs from rubbing together . . . run because endorphins are better than Botox," and so on.

If that sounds like promoting an addiction . . .

"It is an addiction," said Meb Keflezighi, the 36-year-old naturalized American who won New York in 2009 and finished second in the 2004 Olympic marathon. "If you miss a day or get injured -- elite athletes get it, others get it -- you don't feel good."

Lauren Fleshman, the 30-year-old former All-American distance champion from Stanford and national 5,000-meter champion, has been running since eighth grade and is convinced "there's science that would back up" the addiction theory. "The endorphins released. Whether or not you're getting a runner's high, you're getting a certain amount of positive feedback, getting out there and working hard. When I take a break, it's like the worst three weeks of my year."

Aside from the pros who will be at the front of the pack Sunday, there are the thousands whose running habit is chronicled in such venues as the U.S. Running Streak Association, which keeps an on-line list of the country's longest unbroken runs of running -- defined by the USRSA as running "at least one continuous mile within each calendar day under one's own body power."

A 60-year-old California teacher and coach named Mark Covert leads that race -- 15,810 days (43.29 years). In 1985, a physician named William Glasser published "Positive Addiction," citing running and meditation as primary means of forging new neuronal connections in the brain to improve thinking and creativity.

"You get a certain sense of accomplishment with running that you want to reproduce," said Bobby Curtis, the 26-year-old former NCAA cross country champion at Villanova who is attempting his first marathon Sunday. "You feel good about yourself when you accomplish things, training or racing, and you want to recreate that feeling."

One of Sunday's race favorites, 30-year-old Kenyan Geoffrey Mutai, ran out of necessity as a child. It was the only way to get to school. Yet he soon found that "if I'm not running, I feel something is missing. I feel not normal. I feel like it's something that got in my blood."

Run "to sweat away your sins," the Road Runners' manifesto preaches. "Run so bullies can never catch you. Run with your thoughts. Run your troubles the hell out of town . . . "

When injuries or illness strike, as they inevitably do, "those are the hardest times of my life," said Ed Moran, the 30-year-old Staten Island native, former William & Mary distance champion and among Sunday's debut marathoners. "When you miss days running, you really do lose your center."

Not everyone should run a marathon, Wittenberg said. But she argues that everyone should be active. "I use the word 'evangelist' for Mary," said David Monti, the Road Runners official in charge of assembling the professional fields for the marathon. Wittenberg constantly speaks about "the gift of running" that she wants to pass on to younger generations, "not only the physical fitness, but how it makes kids emotionally stronger and better prepared for school."

She contends that running "is not a sport you dabble in. The more you do it, the easier it is."

Keflezighi's argument is that "something like the 5k [3.1 miles] might seem impossible at first, but you give it 21 days, you get over the soreness in four or five days, and if you can do it routinely, you feel good about yourself. Pretty soon you're going to work saying, 'I did seven miles,' or '10 miles,' and it becomes 15 miles."

And you're hooked.

(Full disclosure: As of Sunday, the addicted author's running streak has reached a modest 1,790 days.)