As I turned the corner and entered the underpass around mile three of the Wilmington Marathon, the road became dark and wet, and a runner behind me shouted, trying to be witty, “beware of the needles.” But as you can imagine, this came off as tone deaf at best. This was a particular form of discomfort that had nothing to do with the lactic acid build up in my legs.
Around this mile, the course takes runners away from the riverfront and into more residential areas of Wilmington, DE. At this stage, you see fewer volunteers around and more vacant storefronts, more people sitting or sleeping near the course, and the inevitable thought clouded my head: What are the ethics of this race, or any race for that matter?
The Delaware Running Festival markets itself, in the language that can be found on the website, as a tour of the “best of Wilmington”: Brandywine Park, the riverfront, the historic — and very affluent — neighborhoods, and the downtown part of town that Corrigan Sports Enterprises, the Maryland-based company that owns the events, describes as “the financial center of the United States.” In parts of the course, runners are enthralled by the physical beauty of antique mansions dotting the street or greenery at every corner. The course also moves through a predominantly Black, majority-working class city that a for-profit events company has framed as a backdrop, and sitting with that designed distinction is worth being uncomfortable with long after the medal is placed over your head…