Ready for your closeup, Mr. Parisi?

The standards are different from one to the other, but if you want to run officially in one of the major marathons - Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Tokyo - you have to qualify. And everyone who wants to run doesn't get to run, even if they've completed another marathon in a qualifying time for their age group and gender. 

There are ways of getting around it, for Boston at least.

Local charities are awarded bib numbers - getting those bib numbers in itself is highly competitive - that they can give to runners who will raise money for them by running. Obviously, no one who's not at least a somewhat accomplished runner and/or pretty fit and/or a glutton for punishment is going to sign up to run 26.2 miles. But if you're willing and can raise the required amount of dough, you might be able to run Boston.

Even though it has a colossal number of runners (over 50,000), the New York City Marathon- which seems pretty cool, as the course takes you through all five boroughs - is one of the most difficult to get into. One path to getting a number for New York is entering a lottery. There aren't a lot of numbers available for lottery-ites. And this year, the New York Road Runners (which organizes the NYC Marathon) sent out 160,000 rejection emails.  

Even if it's part of an impersonal, mass rejection, getting turned down is never easy.

Why, this coming Saturday, the Savannah Bananas (a barnstorming baseball team; think basketball's Harlem Globetrotters of baseball) are playing a game at Fenway Park. Both my sister Trish and I put our names into the lottery hat for the opportunity to buy tickets to this game. And we were both rejected.

Oh, they tried to let us losers down easy:

Well, Friend... There's no easy way to say this... Your name was not one of the ones drawn to grab Banana Ball tickets.

No need to sugar coat it - there were WAY more people on the Ticket Lottery List than tickets available. We were hoping to see your name on the lucky list of randomly drawn folks, but it just wasn't in the cards right now. We know that this news is a bummer, but we still think you're a really, REALLY cool person. Tell you what... We will love you forever and always...WE PROMISE

Boo-hoo! I'm sure the Bananas were inundated by local baseball fans who, like Trish and I, are pretty much boycotting the Red Sox, but still like to take ourselves out to an occasional ball game.  Still, we were plenty bummed out. Rejection is painful.

If you're a reasonably good runner who wants to run New York, getting the turn down email is going to hurt. 

Like the Bananas, the New York Road Runners tried to let its huddled mass of losers down gently with an attempt at humor. In this case, using a picture of a prior year marthoner by the name of NICK (according to his singlet) giving the world a couple of finger guns. 

As it turns out, one of the rejectees was Nick Parisi, who was a bit taken aback when he saw that the rejection letter used his very own image, finger gunning at the finish of the 2023 New York City race - his very first marathon -  to tell him and 159,999 other runners that they were out of luck. 

And all of a sudden, one of the 159,999 rejected runners decided to create a meme out of it. And all of a sudden Negative Nick was a thing. 

The story has a happy ending for Parisi, though. The viral photo reached the NYRR marketing team, and they felt they had to make it up to him. NYRR CEO Rob Simmelkjaer showed up at Parisi’s club Front Runners NYC ...apologizing for the mix-up and offering him a guaranteed spot at the 2024 TCS New York City Marathon start line with the bib “Positive Parisi.” (Source: Running Magazine).

Parisi, by the way, is already running Berlin in September, so he'll probably be plenty tired if he also ends up doing NYC.  When he runs Berlin, he'll be doing so in honor of his mother, who died in 2022 from skin cancer - and raising money for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. As a sign of good faith, the New York Road Runners will match the amount Parisi raises. 

Which I bet will be plenty after all of this. Serves them right. Kinda sorta stupid to use someone's picture without permission. Maybe they should have AI'd it. Of course, that would have meant the possibility of an AI screwup, and a picture of someone with eight fingers doing that gunning. (Too many digits seems to be a somewhat common AI tell.)

Anyway, I hope that Nick Parisi has a great run in Berlin, and an even better run in New York City. 

I'm sure he'll be ready for his next finish line closeup.