Olympic Women's Marathon

I'm a few days late in commenting about this, but I watched the last half of the Olympic Women's Marathon the other day. That may not sound like an exciting thing, but, like the Olympic Women's Triathalon today, it was an exciting race.

In the marathon, the Japanese and British runner were in the lead from the beginning. Approximately 23 miles into the race, the British runner just stopped. She'd given all she had to give. A real heartbreaker. At the 25 km mark, the Japanese runner had made her move, and she comfortably took a lead and wasn't really challenged again--she ran a beautiful race and made it look effortless until the very end. But the real excitment came as the American runner worked her way up from 18th, to 11th, to 8th, to 6th, to 4th, to 3rd place (or something similar to that). She ran her own race. She ran steadily, and she finished with a Bronze medal.

Today, in the triathalon, Australia and the United States held the first four places nearly throughout the entire race. Then, near the end, the Austrian runner appeared, seemingly form nowhere to take the Gold. Another exciting race. And the US Bronze medal winner, instead of grousing because she'd been in contention to maybe earn a Gold, was smiling during the award ceremony and looked happy with what she'd earned.

Two races which turned out to be very exciting to watch.