Mayor Bloomberg did the right thing when he cancelled this year’s New York City Marathon in the wake of Hurricane Sandy — but it shouldn’t have taken him until the 11th hour to make this simple decision.
And what’s up with the New York Road runners, who apparently blamed the media for the cancellation of its beloved race.
The self-centered, running-mad organization had the gall to e-mail a note to its 47,000 members explaining that the race was cancelled not because it would have diverted resources from those that needed them most, but because the public’s perceived that was the case.
How totally insensitive can you get?
Thousands of citizens are homeless. More than 45 people have died and many are still without electric or heat. And the club thinks the race wouldn’t have diverted resources and it had become a source of controversy and division? Huh?
A little research on the net revealed how much stuff the marathon uses. Matthew Wisner of FoxBusiness wrote that the Road Runners provide the necessities for the participants before, during, and after the marathon.
That includes 563 pounds of coffee (that can make approximately 45,000 cups). Meanwhile, there are about 93,600 eight-ounce bottles of water at the race start as well as 62,370 gallons of water along the course and bottles in the recovery bags at the finish.
On top of that, city workers have a lot on their plate the day the race kicks off. According to Wisner, Sanitation collects 114.29 tons of litter, 6.34 tons of paper and 2.98 tons of metal, glass, and plastic after the 2010 marathon.
And after this year’s marathon, the Strongest would have deployed 173 uniformed sanitation workers as well as 20 supervisors to operate 39 collection trucks, 441 mechanical brooms, seven dump trucks, and 21 push brooms and backpack blowers to clean up the refuse from the race.
That doesn’t even begin to address the shear number of police, paramedic, and fire personnel needed just in case a runner drops.
Not for Nuthin™, but the behavior of these insensitive buffoons has left a very nasty taste in my mouth. I don’t care how much money the marathon brings into the city, as far as I’m concerned the Road Runners and those “marathon holdovers” can take next year’s race elsewhere.
I’m not saying where, but you can probably guess the destination.
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
Joanna DelBuono writes about national issues — and fitness — every Wednesday on BrooklynDaily.com.