Easy Sunday: The Portland Marathon.

Portland hosted a marathon last weekend, same as ever.

Last weekend's marathon steered runners through downtown and around the neighborhoods of Portland. Police were available to block the streets for the runners. Highschool bands and street musicians played at intervals along the 26.2 miles. Aid stations supplied water and banana segments. Bystanders lined the streets shouting encouragement. Children slapped "high-five" to runners as they passed by.

Another good marathon on a good October day.

A marathon stresses a city's capacity to keep order because it consumes police resources to block off streets, redirect traffic,  and control crowds for several hours over a 26.2-mile route. Only a city with spare capacity can pull this off. 

The Portland Marathon holds a special place in my heart. It was the first of 10 marathons that I ran, starting when I turned 54 years old, 22 years ago. I was slow in that race. It took me four hours, 37 minutes to finish. Slow. And then I got slower as I aged and found other marathons to run. In those races I was toward the back of the pack, slogging away, sore and tired. We slowpokes tied up streets for five hours and more.

It is a great way to see a city, and I saw some wonderful ones as I did "marathon tourism" for a decade. I combined training for a marathon with the payoff of a run in a world class city: Paris, Athens, Rome, Barcelona, Istanbul, Hong Kong, and others. 

Medford City Council member Kevin Stine reminded me of the Portland Marathon. He sent me a report on Portland for a guest post, which I will publish tomorrow. He explained that he was in Portland to run that marathon. He finished in three hours and 23 minutes.

Kevin Stine

Sometimes the most important things happening are the hardest things to notice, and that is what does not happen. What did not happen was that Portland needed to cancel the marathon because the police are overwhelmed dealing with the chaos and mayhem caused by armies of antifa arsonists and murderers. Things are OK in Portland. Portland is managing just fine without federal troops.

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