nymarathon

ok, so this was from the nytimes.........prisoner Has Name and Marathon Number (49997)

By JERE LONGMAN
Published: November 6, 2005

MALONE, Fla., Nov. 2 - In a recent letter to the director of the New York City Marathon, Jim Deupree asked to run the 26.2-mile race on Sunday. His would be an unlikely entry. He is incarcerated at a state prison here among the cotton and peanut farms of the Florida Panhandle, midway through a 30-year sentence for armed robbery.

Prison officials say Deupree, 69, has conned New York City Marathon officials to gain entry to the race.

Deupree's running shoes are falling apart and caked with dust.

"I am a fairly decent 69-year-old long-distance runner and commercial printing salesman from Indiana presently 'retired' here in Florida," Deupree wrote with dark humor.

He proposed to run, not through New York's five boroughs with 37,000 other entrants, but in the razor-wire isolation of the prison yard of the Jackson Correctional Institute. He would circle a dirt track, one that measures about two and a quarter laps to the mile, until he completed the marathon in about 60 laps. He said he had trained 50 miles a week and hoped to complete the race in four hours.

His aim, Deupree said, would be to raise money for cancer research in memory of George Sheehan, the running guru and author who died of prostate cancer in 1993. Sheehan had written encouraging notes and sent him running shoes, Deupree said.

He had run about 200 of these proxy races of various distances over the past 10 years, Deupree wrote in September to Mary Wittenberg, director of the New York City Marathon and chief executive of the New York Road Runners, the club that organizes the race.

The club eagerly granted Deupree a race number, 49997, and asked that he report his finishing time. "Keep on running!" Robert L. Laufer, a lawyer for the Road Runners, wrote.

Florida prison officials have taken a more skeptical view of Deupree's running over the past decade, saying that organizers of distance runs around the country are too credulous in allowing him virtual entry into their races.

Prison officials acknowledged that Deupree did run on the prison track. But they questioned whether he was completing races and seeking to raise money for cancer research or whether he was merely seeking publicity in hopes of receiving a commuted sentence.