Tonight, I watched Run for your Life the story of Fred Lebow, who founded the New York City Marathon. The documentary started off with some early 1970’s porn music, just open up that first link and you’ll get a taste! There was some great footage and pictures of runners, to give you an idea of what it was like before the jogging boom swept the country.

The documentary took a look at the early days of the NYC Marathon and the New York Road Runners. The original NYC Marathon was run in Central Park, with runners doing several laps around the park. The race eventually out grew the park and was transformed into the Five Burroughs Marathon. One of the old time runners stated that “There weren’t a lot of runners back then but the ones that ran were fast.” The documentary has a lot of great footage and interviews with Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, Alberto Salazar, Grete Waitz, Ed Koch and other people who worked with Fred.

Fred Lebow was an interesting character. He was always running around town wearing running gear and his trade mark cycling cap on his head. He never married and had no children and the documentary makes it sound like he was a bit of a ladies’ man. He was an immigrant from Romania, born in Transylvania. I loved the footage of Fred at the finish line, he would always stand in the middle of the road about a few feet from the finish, cheering in every runner as they came by and I had forgotten that until I saw the footage.

The documentary was pretty even handed; it explored the genius side of Fred as well as some of his questionable business tactics. At one point Fred wrote a book, bragging about how he was able to pay millions of dollars to elite runners, while not paying the city of New York a dime to use Central Park or to use their police force, this did not sit well with Ed Koch. At times Fred comes off as brilliant, creating themed races, the pasta dinner, using sponsorships, etc Other times, Fred comes off as a questionable leader, it appeared that he had trouble delegating and was a bit of a dictator, also he wasn’t that concerned about the bottom line and keeping NYRR in the black. I get the impression that Fred loved the attention, at one point he was quoted as saying “that in order for the club and the race to be famous, it needed somebody who was famous at the helm.” I’d probably disagree with Fred on that point.

I enjoyed this documentary, the footage was great, but at times it did move slowly, but that’s mostly in the first 20 minutes when they delve into Fred’s early days before running. If you’re a runner check it out, you’ll enjoy it, it makes me want to run NYC Marathon that is for certain.

Also, while watching the old footage of races, can we please get the starter’s pistol back? Seriously, what happened to that tradition? Now we get a horn, or a “Go!” but it doesn’t have the same effect as seeing the Race Director holding a pistol and firing a shot into the air!