Externality watch: marathon edition

Thousands of unusually fit tourists will descend upon New York this week to make any Park Avenue resident swoon. It's marathon week in NYC, and externalities galore.

First, there's the road closings all along the course, although it's unclear whether that's a net negative or positive. Drivers won't like it, but the million or so spectators surely appreciate it. The same should go for many restaurants along the way. The New York Times even provides a guide on "What to eat if you don't have to run." (I wonder how marathoners feel about that, knowing they are passing on a chance to stop at Cafe Sabarsky.)

The New York Times, ever the spoiler, provides three more reasons to worry about marathon-related externalities. There's packed marathons putting a damper on your time:

[S]he ran shoulder-to-shoulder with other runners through Mile 18. She said she was “up on lawns, weaving in and out of people and wasting a lot of energy,” because the course was so packed.

There's food intake:

“Before, food and wine were the dominating things in my life” ... ,

never mind that he's still

defying the usual culinary doldrums of marathon training and instead finding his way to the finish line on a diet of rib-eyes, cured pig jowl and even Dom Pérignon.

Last but not least, there's everyone else around the marathoner-in-training:

“I miss my guestroom, which has become the garage and smells like a locker room,” she said in an e-mail message. “I miss talking about things other than Harlem hill repeats, and I wish we had put a down payment on an apartment with the money he spent on his stupid custom bike.”

Then, of course, there's health effects -- some negative, but mostly positive, I assume. Has anyone ever tallied these up and put a dollar value on a mile-long run?

And no, I'm not running this week's New York marathon, although I really have no excuse. We live a block from the finish line. Next year...

Comments

[Alan Dove]

Don't forget the pee. Mainstream news outlets are too polite to mention it, but at the start, the crowd of tens of thousands of runners inevitably overwhelms the available Porta-Potties. Those unable or unwilling to wait on line turn the Verrazano Narrows Bridge into the world's largest urinal.

[odograph]

There was a related study that said(*) bicycle riding was bad for the planet, because it increased human life expectancy.

I'm down on marathons because I think they are bad on our health, that they more resemble survival events than natural human patterns of exercise. The body gives up too much (decimation of white blood cell count, etc., during marathons is well documented.)

Of course, maybe that makes them good for the planet.

* - six months or a year ago?

[John Fleck]

And then of course there's the study of marathons reducing traffic deaths. Closing roads is at least in part apparently what you economists call a "positive externality":

http://www.webmd.com/news/20071220/marathons-may-cut-traffic-deaths