RUN FOR THE MONEYToday at 7:30 a.m., 840 runners began their marathon race around the city. Most of them will stay in the race to the end. The prize is money—enough money to pay for a trip to another race! Now it's ten o'clock, and the winner has just crossed the finish line. His time was two hours, thirty minutes, and 25 seconds. The man with the stopwatch is clocking the race. He'll have clocked a different finishing time every few minutes for two hours, when the last runner comes in. The other runners are still racing. They'll finish the race at different times. Some will have run for three hours; some will have run for three and one-half hours; and some will have run for much longer. When they finish, they'll be very tired. They'll have run half the time through city streets. The streets were closed to traffic, so they won't have run into any cars. The rest of the time they'll have run along the river. Each runner will have used his own special method to keep going. The young boy counts the miles. He'll have counted one mile every seven minutes. The older man watches for friends. He'll have seen a number of people finish before him, but he doesn't care. He'll have run every marathon race for thirty years when this race is over. He hasn't ever won any prizes for speed, but he'll have finished more races than any other runner. Today alone he'll have run twenty-six miles, the length of the marathon race.
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