Boston Marathon

Before they can bask in glory, Boston Marathon runners on Monday will first bake in abnormally high temperatures -- so warm, in fact, that race organizers are taking several steps to warn participants and allow those concerned about the heat to instead run next year. The race, which began in 1897 and bills itself as the world's oldest annually contested marathon, is typically held in relatively cool weather. The average temperature for an April day in Boston is 47 degrees -- with a usual high of 56 and low typically of 40 degrees -- according to the city and National Weather Service.

Among runners, it's a statement that awes: "I qualified for Boston. " An admirable finish in a marathon, a 26.2-mile racking of the mind, body and spirit, is four hours. To qualify for Boston, a man age 34 or younger must have run nearly an hour faster, a woman, a half-hour faster. Tens of thousands try every year. Most fail. So Georgia cardiologist Gordon Borkat, 70, was excited when he earned his golden ticket to the country's oldest and most storied race. A 4-hour, 21-minute marathon made him a gazelle in his age group.

A CNN.com journalist has achieved his goal of "tweeting" the London Marathon. Peter Wilkinson, a digital news producer at CNN.com in London, updated his Twitter page during Sunday's race via text messages from his cellphone and completed the course in three hours, 30 minutes -- well inside his four-hour target time. "I've done it 3 hours 30 exactly," Wilkinson wrote as he crossed the finishing line. Wilkinson had been worried before the race that tapping messages into his phone and running at the same time would be "incredibly hard."

The race will be hard enough without the rain that's in the forecast, but one participant in Sunday's London Marathon is challenging himself further by planning to "tweet" while he runs. Pete Wilkinson, a digital news producer at CNN.com in London, says he has no idea whether his plan will work -- and whether he'll even be able to type out the updates into his mobile phone and send them to his Twitter account, but he's going to try anyway. "I think it's going to be incredibly hard," Wilkinson admitted about his plans.

While baseball may have steroids and football may have illicit videotaping, many minor sports outside the mainstream have been shaken by major scandals of their own. Here are eight of our favorites that don't involve performance-enhancing drugs or Tonya Harding. 1. Fishy results In 2005 angler Paul Tormanen of Lee's Summit, Missouri, was a rising star on the competitive bass fishing circuit, often grabbing his limit of fish within an hour of a contest opening. His career seemed to really be taking off, at least until he was arrested in Louisiana for felony contest fraud.

Lisa Ling, co-host of ABC's "The View," competed Monday in the 105th Boston Marathon after just 2 1/2 months of training. Ling was running in the marathon in honor of a 14-year-old cousin, who died of liver cancer, and her uncle, who died of a heart attack after planning to run the race and raise money for pediatric cancer. "I am nervous," Ling told New York's Daily News in Sunday's editions. "I pulled a hamstring and tendon in my foot. But I will just try to relax now. I'm going to finish the marathon by sheer force of will.

IDG When Fatuma Robas foot slammed down on the finish mat in the Boston Marathon Monday, a computer chip laced onto her sneaker recorded her finish time as exactly the same time as Irina Bogachevas. So judges turned to videotape to conclude that Bogachevas torso crossed the finish mat first, giving Bogacheva the secondplace win. ;MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCEnIDG.net home pagenComputerworlds home pagenComputerworld Year 2000 resource centernComputerworlds online subscription centernIDG.

BOSTON CNN When Rick Hoyt was 15, he communicated something to his father that changed both their lives. Dad, the mute quadriplegic wrote in his computer after his father pushed him in a wheelchair in a fivekilometer race, I felt like I wasnt handicapped.;Rick, now 37, has had cerebral palsy since birth. But he has always been treated simply as one of the family, included by his nowdivorced parents in almost everything brothers Rob and Russell did.;They told us to put Rick away, in an institution, because hes going to be nothing but a vegetable for the rest of his life, his father remembers.

Nick Charles looks into the camera, as he's done thousands of times before. Except he's not calling a boxing match for sports fans around the world. He's talking to an audience of one: his 5-year-old daughter, Giovanna. Over the last 40 years, Charles has covered every major sporting event, from the Olympics to the Super Bowl to the Kentucky Derby. He's covered some of the most classic boxing matches -- when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson, when Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear, when Roberto Duran quit and told Sugar Ray Leonard, "No mas. " Yet this is the toughest taping he'll ever deliver, a message from beyond the grave.

By Shayla ThielSpecial to CNN Interactive;CNN Loretta Claiborne was the youngest of six children in a poor, singleparent family. Born partially blind and mildly retarded, she was unable to walk or talk until age 4. ;Eventually, though, she began to run. And before she knew it, she had crossed the finish line of 25 marathons, twice placing among the top 100 women in the Boston Marathon. Shes carried the torch in the International Special Olympics and has won medals in dozens of its events.

Before they can bask in glory, Boston Marathon runners on Monday will first bake in abnormally high temperatures -- so warm, in fact, that race organizers are taking several steps to warn participants and allow those concerned about the heat to instead run next year. The race, which began in 1897 and bills itself as the world's oldest annually contested marathon, is typically held in relatively cool weather. The average temperature for an April day in Boston is 47 degrees -- with a usual high of 56 and low typically of 40 degrees -- according to the city and National Weather Service.

Among runners, it's a statement that awes: "I qualified for Boston. " An admirable finish in a marathon, a 26.2-mile racking of the mind, body and spirit, is four hours. To qualify for Boston, a man age 34 or younger must have run nearly an hour faster, a woman, a half-hour faster. Tens of thousands try every year. Most fail. So Georgia cardiologist Gordon Borkat, 70, was excited when he earned his golden ticket to the country's oldest and most storied race. A 4-hour, 21-minute marathon made him a gazelle in his age group.

A CNN.com journalist has achieved his goal of "tweeting" the London Marathon. Peter Wilkinson, a digital news producer at CNN.com in London, updated his Twitter page during Sunday's race via text messages from his cellphone and completed the course in three hours, 30 minutes -- well inside his four-hour target time. "I've done it 3 hours 30 exactly," Wilkinson wrote as he crossed the finishing line. Wilkinson had been worried before the race that tapping messages into his phone and running at the same time would be "incredibly hard."

The race will be hard enough without the rain that's in the forecast, but one participant in Sunday's London Marathon is challenging himself further by planning to "tweet" while he runs. Pete Wilkinson, a digital news producer at CNN.com in London, says he has no idea whether his plan will work -- and whether he'll even be able to type out the updates into his mobile phone and send them to his Twitter account, but he's going to try anyway. "I think it's going to be incredibly hard," Wilkinson admitted about his plans.

While baseball may have steroids and football may have illicit videotaping, many minor sports outside the mainstream have been shaken by major scandals of their own. Here are eight of our favorites that don't involve performance-enhancing drugs or Tonya Harding. 1. Fishy results In 2005 angler Paul Tormanen of Lee's Summit, Missouri, was a rising star on the competitive bass fishing circuit, often grabbing his limit of fish within an hour of a contest opening. His career seemed to really be taking off, at least until he was arrested in Louisiana for felony contest fraud.

Lisa Ling, co-host of ABC's "The View," competed Monday in the 105th Boston Marathon after just 2 1/2 months of training. Ling was running in the marathon in honor of a 14-year-old cousin, who died of liver cancer, and her uncle, who died of a heart attack after planning to run the race and raise money for pediatric cancer. "I am nervous," Ling told New York's Daily News in Sunday's editions. "I pulled a hamstring and tendon in my foot. But I will just try to relax now. I'm going to finish the marathon by sheer force of will.

IDG When Fatuma Robas foot slammed down on the finish mat in the Boston Marathon Monday, a computer chip laced onto her sneaker recorded her finish time as exactly the same time as Irina Bogachevas. So judges turned to videotape to conclude that Bogachevas torso crossed the finish mat first, giving Bogacheva the secondplace win. ;MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCEnIDG.net home pagenComputerworlds home pagenComputerworld Year 2000 resource centernComputerworlds online subscription centernIDG.