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Are you fugging kidding me? I wonder how many of those marathoners are on something! I know I do Bath Salts before I run it.
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Story:


If you think it’s hard to enter the New York City Marathon, try being Lance Armstrong, whose doping violations have made him ineligible to participate in the celebrated five-borough race ever again.




Armstrong, who ran the marathon in 2006 and 2007, cannot register for the event after the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency officially banned him Friday for leading a sophisticated doping conspiracy to win the Tour de France seven times.

“That’s an event that we test,” a USADA attorney told the Daily News. “So that would fall under our authority.”

New York Road Runners, the group that organizes the annual event, declared on its website that its events are “organized and directed under USA Track and Field rules and regulations,” which include abiding by the World Anti-Doping Code. The USADA attorney said the code’s “mutual recognition” section requires national governing bodies like USATF recognize the ban.

Mary Wittenberg, chief executive officer of New York Road Runners, told the Daily News that the organization will reach out to USADA soon to verify. Wittenberg said she had already contacted the USATF and running’s international federation.

“We will 100% comply if the rules apply to us,” Wittenberg said. “We have to be careful on both sides to do what is legally right. We will look into that.”

Armstrong first ran the event in 2006. He was then a celebrity entrant who had just retired from cycling. He finished in 2 hours, 59.36 seconds, and declared it “without a doubt the hardest physical thing I have ever done.” In 2007 he improved by nearly 13 minutes, finishing 232nd out of a field of nearly 40,000.

Wittenberg called Armstrong’s fall from grace a “sad situation.” Emphasizing that she didn’t know the facts surrounding the case, she said she feared Armstrong had missed an opportunity to “really make a difference.

“I think he has the platform and the credibility to put that bully pulpit he has had to work in a positive way,” she said. “If he had in fact cheated and would be willing to talk about it, the risk and the
downside, and become a symbol that reminds people that it’s not worth it. If it is a situation where Lance may have violated the rules and cheated, what an unbelievable opportunity it would be to tell the story of the importance of playing clean.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/broadway-article-1.1144271