The Detroit Tigers’ recent appearance in the World Series was the latest in a pretty impressive string of high profile events the city of Detroit has hosted over the past 12 months. In fact, the Super Bowl and MLB All-Star Game held earlier this year are arguably the two largest one-day international sports spectaculars around.
But I think the greatest event the city hosts is the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Bank marathon. The course is designed, in part, to showcase some of the city’s most attractive, eclectic enclaves. Yet the event is also international, multicultural and regional all at once. And for the last 29 years, the race has consistently gotten bigger and better.
The 2006 version featured more than 15,800 runners, walkers and hand-cyclists, competing in the full marathon (26.2 miles), half marathon and 5k events. According to the Free Press, this represents an 18.7 percent increase from last year's record field and a 332 percent increase from just 2000. That’s pretty impressive growth.
The race started this year on Washington Boulevard, and even at 7 a.m. on a frigid, blustery Sunday morning, the newly landscaped street teeming with runners was a sight to behold. And as they ran down Michigan Avenue, through Corktown, into Mexican Town and eventually across the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor, loved ones, friends and spectators were there to shout encouragement and snap photos.
Many of these supporters are residents who camp out in front of their homes for a few hours each year, making an event out of the race. Most are people from other Michigan counties and faraway cities. They hold up signs, blow horns or whistles, and are incredibly nice.
Some supporters are more over the top. In Corktown, an Irish band typically serenades runners. In Mexican Town it’s a mariachi band. In Indian Village it’s jazz and lounge singers (don’t know why exactly, but some guys just like standing on the lawns of their mansions singing medleys to runners) and in Greektown, the sound is distinctly Middle Eastern. There’s a comedian at the Ambassador Bridge welcoming runners into Canada (“where your times are 60 percent faster”), and as runners make their way along the Windsor shoreline, a group of bag pipers wails away.
The point is people turn out en masse to offer encouragement, and if there are 15,000 runners, then there are easily 45,000 spectators. There aren’t many stretches of the course where well-wishers can’t be seen, and it’s only on the part of the course that takes runners beneath the Detroit River that they can’t be heard. Which is why, I think, a thousand people pack the exit of the Detroit/Windsor Tunnel to cheer as runners re-enter the country, lining Jefferson Avenue all the way to Cobo Center in the process.
An equally large number pack the entrance to Ford Field where the race winds up, simultaneously motivating participants to finish strong and congratulating them for making it. Another throng of supporters fills seats inside the stadium, loudly welcoming runners as they cross the finish line.
The cool part here is that most of these folks turn out to enthusiastically root for people they do not know -- for several hours, in brisk wind and despite cool temperatures.
There were a couple of thousand volunteers who handed out water, Gatorade and caffeine shots, collected hordes of discarded paper cups and manned stations along the route in various capacities. It was encouraging to hear a runner here or there thank volunteers while they were making their brief pit stops.
The Detroit police do a great job of managing the event, keeping everyone safe, directing traffic -- and a runner or two, on occasion – and pitching in to help volunteers when needed.
You know, I often joke with friends from the area by suggesting that they are not “real” Detroiters until they’ve either paddled underneath or run across the Ambassador Bridge. But I may have to amend that. Because those who came out Sunday represent all that is good about Detroit.
In the hours during and surrounding that event there was no city versus suburbs, no concern for anyone’s color, or physical ability, or age or religion. There were no petty differences over which to bicker, no turf issues or border trouble. People were just there to pull for others in an incredibly selfless way.
Some may disagree, but it is for these reasons that I think the marathon is the easily the greatest event the city hosts, and I hope more people have a chance to experience it -- either from the course or the sidelines.
Rodd Monts
Editorial Services Project Leader
Brand Identity & CommunicationsUnited Way for Southeastern MichiganLabels: Employee Voices, Rodd_Monts
