MIAMI - Winning Sunday's ING Miami Marathon wasn't the most challenging endurance test Michael Wardian has faced over the past week.Nor was it the most grueling race he will run this year. Not even close.
The novelty was how everything went so right in a race that has always been unlucky for the veteran ultra runner from Arlington, Va. Two years ago he dropped out due to illness. This time Wardian led all the way and won by 7 1/2 minutes over Brazil's Cesar Martins in 2:28:39.
"Everything has been perfect this whole weekend," said Wardian, 35. "I thought a deer was going to come in the road and collide with me at mile 25, because nothing can go this well."
Women's champ Brett Ely, of Natick, Mass., was also ecstatic about her biggest win in six marathons. Her time of 2:45:36 qualified her for the Olympic Trials by 24 seconds. It was the first time she has experienced the thrill of breaking the finish tape in any race.
"I've won races before, but they never put the tape up. Just feeling that tape across my chest, I was thrilled," she said.
A record field of 18,321 started the marathon and half marathon before dawn on Biscayne Boulevard, a crowd almost large enough to fill adjacent AmericanAirlines Arena. It took more than 18 minutes for all the runners to reach the starting line.
By then the leaders were 3 1/2 miles down the road and headed for South Beach, where they passed revelers straggling out of nightclubs.
"I got some funny comments from people coming out of bars," Ely said. Among them: "Nice legs."
Wardian's winning time was the slowest in the eight years of the race. It was one of the warmest, and many runners said they were hampered by the humidity.
Ely, a research physiologist with the Department of Defense who studies the affects of extreme temperatures on soldiers and athletes, used her work experience to plot a strategy of conservative pacing.
Wardian carried extra sodium tablets, but the weather wasn't all that extreme by his standards. In April he will run the Marathon des Sables, a 150-mile trek across the Moroccan Sahara Desert. He finished eighth last year in what is dubbed the "toughest foot race on earth."
His biggest challenge Sunday may have been simply staying awake after putting in an 80-hour work week. An international shipping broker, Wardian has been working on arranging shipments of food to Haiti.
Miami native Bryan Sharkey was the top South Florida finisher in his debut marathon, finishing fourth in 2:39:23. The former Gulliver Prep star sprinted past Adrian Canossa Fonseca, then collapsed due to severe cramps and dehydration.
"It felt like my leg was going to fall off," Sharkey said after being treated in the medical tent. "What really messed me up was I set up my water and Gatorade stations for every three miles, and none of my bottles were there until mile 15."
The half marathon was dominated by Team Strands, which took eight of the top nine men's places, led by Justin Young of Bloomington, Ind., in 1:05:57. The women's winner, Meghan Armstrong (1:17:50) also runs for the team that shares training tips on teamstrands.com, a sort of Facebook for athletes. The elite members of the network receive financial backing to train for the Olympics from Strands, a technology firm.
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