............. wrote:
You all need to relax. Who gives a F@#k how many people were actually out there. The original post was "wow, there are no spectators at chicago". and, at the point of the ract this person was talking about there weren't too many people out there. Now, as far as the actual number of spectators is concerned, I know my time was hurt because there were only 500,000 spectators as opposed to 2 million. It just doesn't matter. All of you need to get over it.
Amen, the original purpose of this post was some moron watched 15 seconds of the marathon, saw three people cheering on the west side and concluded there were "no spectators."
Now we have people calling me an idiot becuase "only" 500,000 saw the marathon. Some news media outlets claim it was 1.5 million and I beleive a number as high as 2 million could be reasonable.
Can we conclude that the idea that "no spectators" were at the marathon is just flat out wrong and end this?
Lastly, if you want something to whine about, Mary Wittenberg (on the Chicago broadcast, right before the race started) said that this year 1 million people will run a marathon and it will be watched by 50 million people.
We know that a little more than 110,000 of those runners are from Boston, Chicago and NYC. If they represent 11% of the runners and 11% of the 50 million watched them, that means 5.5 million saw these three races. My guess is 1.75 million for Chicago (3rd largest city), 2.75 for NYC (largest city) and 1 million for Boston (which I believe is the 18th largest city).
Ok all you running fans, go ahead and do the math, and you square footage analysis to claim these numbers are way overstated and then go start another thread and bitch about the lack of interest in running.
Fact is, the interst is there, you don't want to believe it.