August 23, 2008 11:00 AM

A run around the Olympic track

By Chris Tomasson

BEIJING _  The Olympic marathon was scheduled to finish just before 10 a.m. local time Sunday at Beijing's National Stadium.

I beat the winner to the finish line by nearly 12 hours.

OK, so I only ran one lap around the Olympic track Saturday night in Beijing. And nobody was cheering me on, the only people left in the stands being the clean-up crew and journalists who weren't looking up.

Then again, there was this security guard on the track who didn't see want to see me finish in lane 4, which was the lane Usain Bolt has made famous at these Olympics. He tried to get in my way and stop me, but eventually figured it wasn't worth the risk of getting run over.

After the final full day of track and field Saturday night, officials first decided to be tight about letting people onto the track. But then they began to relax the rules, although occasionally they would try to get people to leave the track without success.

After the final race, I went onto the track with some fans and other media members, including a camera crew from the BBC. I had plenty of photos taken of me crossing the finish line (some in lane 4) and did my victory lap, although I'm not sure what the victory was.

The best photos I must say came with the help of fans Bob Boehm, of Lowell, Mass., and Mark Fielder, of Long Island, N.Y. They had gone onto the track with a beer and were taking photos of each other holding it across the finish line.

Eventually, Boehm and I decided to have a photo taken of us doing a beer pass, and a charming South African journalist was called in serve as the photographer. Think of a baton pass during a relay race, only I was handing Boehm a beer.

It should be noted we did not make like the U.S. men's and women's 4 x 100 relay teams and drop it.

Posted by Chris Tomasson at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)