FROM THE EDITORS April 16, 2007 Issue

A RUN FOR LIFE

There's More To A Marathon than meets the eye. Or the running shoes. Long-distance runners know this. So do many onlookers, athletic or not. And so should anyone who is pursuing a worthy goal of any kind and wants to go the distance and accomplish what they set out to do.

Marathons—preparing for them and running in them—provide useful lessons that apply across the spectrum of life. With Boston's well-known footrace happening here April 16, it's a good time to expand on two of those lessons.

People watch races from several vantage points. There's the eye on the scene from the sidelines. Television cameras mounted on vehicles just ahead of the runners deliver another point of view. And then there's the big-picture perspective from helicopters overhead. From that higher elevation comes a much wider view—far above the action on the ground, onlookers can see the whole course, and then some.

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