I finally saw The Spirit of the Marathon, I know that every other runner saw it in the theater, but I finally got around to watching it. Two running documentaries in seven days, first Run for your Life and now The Spirit of the Marathon.

The documentary focused on the 2005 Chicago Marathon, it followed six unique characters, including two elites, Deena Kastor and Daniel Njenga. The rest of the runners featured are your average everyday runners, a 70 year old Dad running with his daughter, etc. One complaint that I do have is I wish they would have featured one or two above average runners, perhaps good age group runners, guys running in the low three hours. Instead you had the extremes, the elite runners and people who are just getting into running, taking the 4:30+ to finish the marathon.

One of the runners featured was Ryan Bradley, who was a 3:10 marathon runner, obsessed with qualifying for Boston. He was injured during the filming, thus unable to run the marathon, so to be fair, they did attempt to have a solid runner in the documentary who was not a professional. However, Ryan gets to the point that I made the other day, how so many runners are obsessed with qualifying for Boston that they let it define them and you get the sense that he just wants to be able to say that he ran the Boston Marathon.

The documentary takes you through the training of Deena and Daniel, showing a glimpse of how the elites train. They go to Japan where Daniel lives, but he is also a native of Kenya, so the cameras follow him to Kenya as well. I wish they would have showed more footage of him in Japan. It was interesting to hear a Kenyan speaking Japanese, wearing the Japanese track suits and racing flats that you see so many of the Japanese elite runners wear, letting you know that he has been influenced by his new home country. Daniel’s story was the most intriguing, as you get an idea of what these Kenyans struggle with, for most of us the race is fun and an experience, however these Kenyans are racing for the cash prizes, hoping to improve their life and their families life back in Africa. Then of course they show you how the other six runners train, either via running groups or by training solo.

The footage and the cinematography were spectacular. The documentary also featured Runner’s World own celebrity, John “The Penguin” Bingham. I already have mixed feelings about this guy and won’t get into it too much, but when someone writes a running book called “ No Need for Speed“, you have to shake your head. It’s like writing a book about basketball, titled “No Need for D.” At one point in the documentary he makes a comment about how the race course is opened for seven hours and that if you finish any faster than that, you’re not getting your money’s worth. Let’s just say that the Penguin and RunColo have different definitions of the word “worth.”

The Spirit of the Marathon was enjoyable and I highly recommend it. I have heard from a few of my friends, above average runners, that they didn’t enjoy it because it focused too much on the average runner. I understand their complaints, but when the average marathon time is 4:30, good marketing is making a documentary that caters to the peak of that bell curve, not to the people in the second or third standard deviations.