Boston Success Flies Under Detroit Sports Radar

(Brian Sell, Member of Hanson's-Brooks Distance Project finished 4th at the 2006 Boston Marathon -- photo courtesy of Adam Hunger/Associated Press)

Yesterday was the 110th Boston Marathon. For many American sports fans, this event is a mere blip on their radar screens. Americans, especially Detroiters, love their sports and devote a significant amount of time and energy rooting for their favorite athletes. Detroit's professional basketball and hockey teams are currently the best teams in their respective leagues, and the amount of publicity and media coverage they receive is often overwhelming. If it were it up to the throngs of loyal supporters in this town, the Red Wings long-time captain, Steve Yzerman, would be on the fast track to sainthood. The Piston's Chauncy Billups regularly gets mobbed in shopping malls and grocery stores by adoring fans. A wide majority of these sports fans, however, are clueless to the fact that some of the world's greatest athletes live, train, shop and work in their own back yards. Four of the top 15 finishers of yesterday's Boston Marathon are members of the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project. Sponsored by a local running shop, this team trains through the streets of Metro-Detroit in an Olympic development program that produces the nation's top distance runners. These runners relocate from all parts of the country to train as a professional no more than a few miles from where I've been logging my training runs.

I had the opportunity to meet a few of these runners at a recent Team In Training clinic held at one of the Hanson Running Shops. They fitted me for a pair of shoes, recommended some race-day apparel and answered a laundry list of questions I had about training for a marathon. I didn't have to wait in a line of autograph hawkers or push my way through mobs of fans. A humble and unassuming professional athlete could not have been more accessible. It was like stopping into the local YMCA to ask Chauncy Billups for advice on free throw shooting or getting a golf lesson from Tiger Woods at the Belle Isle driving range.

The major difference, of coarse, is the exposure that elite runners receive in light of the popularity of other professional sports. As proof, this morning's Detroit News included a brief mention of the success of these local runners at the Boston Marathon on its back pages, opting for lead coverage of the city's more popular baseball and hockey teams. The coverage from the national media was anything but thorough and even poked fun at marathon runners. This year's Master's champion Phil Mickelson and Wilmbledon champion Roger Federer each pulled in over $1 million in prize money for winning their respective sports' most coveted tournament. The winner of the most prestigious marathon in the world earned only $100,000 yesterday in Boston. Fourth place winner Brian Sell and tenth place finisher Clint Verran have trained just as hard as any of the world's elite athletes. They would both likely argue that running 100 miles a week all-year round in Michigan, is a hell of a lot more gruelling than knocking down a series 30 foot putts at Pebble Beach.

I bring this point up, because the past six months of training has opened my eyes to a new sport and given me a new-found appreciation for the amount of time and pain that goes into preparing yourself for a marathon. I'm no different than the next sports fan in Detroit. I follow our local teams regularly and celebrate their victories as if I'm an actual member of the team. The local running team who dominated the Boston Marathon should be no different. Deserving of some coverage by the mainstream media outlets, the elite runners of the Hansons-Brooks team will have settle for a blog entry by a newly-won fan.