Runners World

By some evil twist of fate, Spirit of the Marathon showed up in the mailbox and Tribeca 2008 veteran Run for Your Life had a one-week engagement at the Village East the same time I was on crutches and had to give up running a half-marathon after screwing up my left calf muscle. Still, I watched both movies: I am your dedicated film critic, after all. I write my brief thoughts several weeks later, having returned to training too soon and straining my right calf muscle. The world is unfair sometimes.

In time for the fall racing season, two running-themed documentaries, Spirit of the Marathon and Run for Your Life, arrived on DVD. Both are likely to hold more interest for those who lace up their sneakers on a regular basis, although non-athletic New Yorkers also may enjoy the latter, a look at adopted son Fred Lebow.

As a newbie runner, I prefer Spirit of the Marathon, which tracks (no pun intended) six people preparing for the 2005 Chicago Marathon. Director Jon Dunham could’ve composed his film better: The focus is heavier on some non-famous faces (father and longtime runner Jerry, hard-luck Leah) than others (Jerry’s daughter, rookie Rona), and timelines don’t always compute. I also wish I learned more about the course beyond that it’s flat and fast, which any casual marathon follower knows, and additional background about training would help non-track stars. When Dunham shows the runners discussing diet, pace groups and mileage plans, though, my own (curtailed) training plans were awakened. And as cheesy as it may sound, it’s inspiring to see anyone complete 26.2 miles of running.

As a critic, I like Run for Your Life better because director Judd Ehrlich really captures his subject’s 1970s heyday with archival footage (short shorts!), disco-style fonts and funky music. Lebow was one of those colorful, only-in-New-York stories, a Romanian immigrant and garment worker who grew the city’s marathon from laps around Central Park in 1970 to today’s five-borough behemoth. Lebow was quite the showman, getting Playboy Bunnies to run the first women’s mini-marathon and creating races for every occasion. Ehrlich doesn’t incorporate the non-running parts of Lebow’s biography as smoothly as the marathon ones; the talking heads babble more than bring their man into focus. Fortunately, Run for Your Life rebounds in its final laps with Lebow’s own poignant race journey after his cancer diagnosis.