Of all the Olympic events, there is only one I know from the inside: the marathon. When the commentators talked about the "halfway point" of this 26.2 mile race being mile 20, I knew just what they meant. It was at mile 20 that we turned south off East Jefferson Avenue onto the Belle Isle Bridge, but we still had 6.2 miles to go, and, oh, those 6.2 miles were hard. When I saw the racers pouring water over their heads, I remembered doing the same. My second marathon was relatively cool, but the first was plenty warm. You wanted to do anything you could to cool off. When bronze medalist Tsegay Kebede of Ethiopia found the reserves within himself to pass another racer at the last, I recalled putting on a similar sprint in the final yards of my second marathon to pass the man ahead of me. I can still feel my elation as I crossed that finish line to the cheers of the crowd. And I can also feel the energy draining out of my legs almost immediately. Now gold medalist Sammy Wanjiru of Kenya may have broken the Olympic record with his 2hr 6min 32 second run, but I took 20 minutes off my previous time by finishing the 1980 Detroit/Windsor International Marathon in 3 hours 44 minutes. That stands as my personal best.

Ah yes, I do love watching the Olympic marathon on TV!