Gilles Peterson - PB at New York Marathon

I love Gilles Peterson as a DJ, I know if I listen to one of his mixes or radio shows that there will be lots of great music that I have never heard before - in short I trust him, he has even helped persuade me that jazz is OK, at least at the funkier end of its spectrum!

Gilles ran New York City Marathon last Sunday in a PB of 4:19:40. He ran his first marathon (London) in 2011 in 4:43:09, of which he wrote:

'Running around the streets of London yesterday made me appreciate this great city and its people – I love it here. The crowd was so encouraging – amazing… and it was funny how it changed from Greenwich to Deptford to the Isle Of Dogs – posh to chavvy – classic… the bands playing along were great – a lot of jazz funnily enough… more thoughts of Steve Reid!… and a brilliant bit about 21 miles in just before Tower Bridge on the Highway – massive sound playing – Rhythm Is Rhythm – ‘Strings of Life’… I thought I was on one in a rave on the Lee Bridge Road in ’88… I was properly tripping by then – that was my existential moment of the marathon!'

Since then he has run London Marathon three more times (2012, 2013, and 2014).  Gilles was running in New York to raise funds for the Steve Reid Foundation, a charity he helped set up a few years ago to help musicians in crisis (Steve Reid was a jazz drummer who died in 2010, unable to afford the medical treatments he needed).  After running 26.2 miles on Sunday, Peterson went on to another marathon DJ set at a fundraiser in New York at Le Bain, along with Francois K, Louie Vega and others. The flyer promised that 'his DJ set will be the length of his marathon run' and apparently he put in the full four hours.

He's already raised more than £5000 from the run, but there's still time to donate at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/GillesPeterson2016

See previously:

Musicians in Motion -

Emma Jackson (ex-Kenickie) and Johny Brown (Band of Holy Joy) at Great North Run

Dexys Midnight Runners, Running

Running with Madonna

Joe Strummer: Marathon Runner

Morrissey and Marr: The Running Smiths

Viv Albertine (The Slits) on Running

Stuart Murdoch/Belle & Sebastian

Billy McKenzie/The Associates
Northern Soul and Running as the New Raving

Record Sleeve Athletics:

Musique - Keep on Jumpin'

4-Play - Olympic Rap

Sergio Mendes - Olympia

Giorgo Moroder - Reach Out

Skids - Days in Europa
Three Degrees - The Runner

Blackbyrds - Action

Santana - Marathon

Joan Armatrading - Track Record & Roxy Music - Flesh and Blood

Carl Lewis

BBC Sporting Sound Effects

Do the Right Thing: Spike Lee, Alicia Keys & New York City Marathon

I caught the New York City Marathon on TV yesterday, featuring film director Spike Lee as Grand Marshal cruising along in a fine 1969 Chrysler. 

Spike Lee in the week before the race with last year's winners Mary Keitany and Tatyana McFadden (who won again this year in women's and women's wheelchair races), Wilson Kipsang and Kurt Fearnley.

Among his many achievements, Spike Lee is responsible for what I and many others believe to be the greatest opening credits in movie history, as well as the finest fitness/boxing/dance routine in cinema: the first few minutes of 'Do the Right Thing' with Rosie Perez and Public Enemy's Fight the Power. Pure energy and joie de vivre, makes me want to go and run round a track as fast as I can.

Rosie Perez in Do the Right Thing

This year's NYC Marathon also featured Alicia Keys, who also of course wrote one of the four best songs about New York of the century so far and sang on one of the others (that would be her own 'Empire State of Mind, Part II' and Jay Z's 'Empire State of Mind' - the others being LCD Soundsystem's 'New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down' and SBTRKT 'New Dorp. New York' in my humble opinion). 

(from Alicia Keys on Instagram)

Alicia Keys previously ran a Marathon in Greece in 2007. In a blog describing her New York training this year, she says 'every morning, I get on my running swag, put the baby in the running stroller, and put on my headphones' and listen to audiobooks including Toni Morrison and Malcolm Gladwell.

She was running for her HIV charity Keep a Child Alive: 'This is what inspires me when my body begins to tire. My training is nothing compared to the challenging journey these families face every day. We may not be able to walk a mile in their shoes, but we can certainly run a mile (or 26.2) for their lives and for the forward motion of all the young people who are creating a whole new Africa'.

Friday Photos (18): Athletes Protests, 1968-2014

In the past few weeks there has been a wave of protests across the United States and beyond in response to police killings, with apparent impunity, of two black men -  Eric Garner in New York and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. 

A number of prominent athletes/sports people have staged their own protests as part of this movement. 'Hands Up, Don't Shoot' has been the gesture/chant of the Ferguson protests, and last month St Louis Rams players put their hands up prior to a National Football League match.

St Louis Rams players raise their hands before NFL game

Michael Brown's last words as he was being choked by police were 'I can't breathe' and this has been the slogan of the protests that have followed the decision not to prosecute any of the police officers involved. 'I can't breathe' t-shirts have been worn by various football and basketball players including Derrick Rose (Chicago Bulls) and LeBron James (Cleveland Cavaliers)

Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls

LeBronJames

In NCAA college basketball, the whole Georgetown team game wore the t-shirts during the national anthem before a match in Washington last week:

Mexico 1968

All of this recalls the most famous athletes protest of all - when Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave clenched fist salutes on the podium at the 1968 Mexico Olympics during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. Smith had just won the Gold medal in the 200m, and Carlos the bronze. The silver medallist, Australia's Peter Norman, was also in on the protest - he too wore a patch of the anti-racist Olympic Project for Human Rights.

Moscow 2013

Last year's World Athletics Championships in Moscow took place against the planned introduction of new anti-gay laws in Russia. Swedish athletes led the protests with high jumper Emma Green Tregaro and sprinter Moa Hjelmer painting their nails in rainbow colours.

Robbie Fowler and the Dockers

In English professional football, one of the most celebrated protests took place in 1997, when Liverpool FC's Robbie Fowler displayed a t-shirt in support of striking dockers in the city shortly after scoring a goal.

Update February 2016

Not technically an athletes' protest but at the 2016 American football Superbowl, Beyonce's half time performance famously referenced the Black Panthers and Malcolm X - and immediately afterwards some of her dancers were pictured with a Justice 4 Mario Woods sign. Woods was a black man killed by San Francisco police.

Previously in Friday photo series:

New York High School Runners 1970s

Lilian Board, 1948-1970
Running in Tel Aviv 1942
Alan Turing the Runner

Marilyn Monroe the Runner
Tom Longboat, Canadian First Nations Marathon Runner
Runners in Space: an image from Munich 1972 on NASA's Voyager spacecraft

Jim Peters collapses in Vancouver 1954

Anita Neil - Britain's first female Black Olympian?

Running in the Streets of New Cross 1953

Running tracks from space

Running with Madonna

Ron Hill

1930s photos from Margate (Kent) and White City (London)

Magic Lantern Slides of London Running, 1909

Ladywell Running Track 1950
Muhammad Ali Running

Friday photos (12): Running with Madonna: 'Those who run seem to have all the fun'

Madonna's been running regularly since the 1980s, not sure whether she's ever taken part in a race but she's often been photographed out and about with an assortment of personal trainers and bodyguards.

Most of these photos were taken around 1987 when she carried off some great running outfits:

Madonna running past Buckingham Palace in London, 1987

Madonna in Central Park, New York 2006

Boy George said recently: “As for Madonna, I always used to laugh at her running. And now I run! I get why she always ran. I wish I'd run when she did.”

Madonna's Hung Up includes the great line 'those who run seem to have all the fun'. She has also written and recorded a song called 'Run'. I don't think it's ever been released but you can find demo versions of it online - the lyrics include:

'If you wanna catch up to me

You better run as fast as you can

If you wanna live up to me

You better show me that you're the man

Am I going too fast

Am I going too fast for you baby

Never gonna finish last

Am I going too fast for you baby

Run run run run for your life

I said

Run run run but you better think twice'

Previously in the Friday Photos series:

New York High School Runners 1970s

Lilian Board, 1948-1970
Running in Tel Aviv 1942
Alan Turing the Runner

Marilyn Monroe the Runner
Tom Longboat, Canadian First Nations Marathon Runner
Runners in Space: an image from Munich 1972 on NASA's Voyager spacecraft

Jim Peters collapses in Vancouver 1954

Anita Neil - Britain's first female Black Olympian?

Running in the Streets of New Cross 1953

Running tracks from space

Friday Photos (5): Tom Longboat (1887-1949): Canadian First Nations Marathon Runner

These photos are of Tom Longboat (1887-1949), the Canadian/First Nations long distance runner.

As summarised by Deseronto Archives: 'One of the most famous Canadian athletes of 1908 was Tom Longboat, a marathon runner with a string of successful races to his name. He was born in 1887 to Onondaga parents in the Six Nations of the Grand River Indian Reserve. His first major race victory was at the 1906 Around the Bay Race in Hamilton, Ontario. In 1907 he won the Boston Marathon and the following year he went to London, England, to run in the Olympic Games'. After leading for much of the 1908 London Olympic Marathon, he collapsed and did not finish. Like many runners of that time his career was bedevilled by the division between 'amateur' and 'professional' athletics, and it has even been suggested that his 1908 run might have been sabotaged by his own manager trying to fix the race for gambling interests. In 1979 a street was named after him in Toronto.

In a reversal of the Olympic outcome, Longboat won a professional track marathon race in February 1909  at New York's Madison Square Garden, beating English runner Alfred Shrubb who collapsed near the end of the race. It was big news - taking up most of the front page of the Montreal Gazette the next day (extract below from the paper, 6 February 1909):

'Tom Longboat, the Canadian Indian, tonight won the Marathon race at Madison Square Garden from Alfred Shrubb, the English long distance runner. Shrubb, after leading all the way many laps ahead, collapsed in the fifth lap of the twenty-fifth mile and could not resume running, while the Indian, who never tried to follow Shrubb's early fast pace, continued to the end'

Previously in this series:

New York High School Runners 1970s

Running in Tel Aviv 1942

Alan Turing the Runner

Marilyn Monroe the Runner

Friday Photos (4): New York High School Runners 1970s

New York running 1970s style - caption from New York Daily News says 'George Washington High School runners (left to right) Jose Fernandez, Abdidas Suero, Kevin Brown, and Ramon Severino getting ready for New York Relays in 1976':

Also from the New York Daily News 'Power Memorial High School runners (l. to. r.)  Maurice Weaver, Julio Rivera, Frank Rafferty and Alfred Fiorentino prepare for the 1975 New York Relays. The Manhattan-based Catholic school was a long distance powerhouse during the three decades' (1960s-80s):

More in this series:

Tom Longboat: Canadian First Nations Marathon Runner

Running in Tel Aviv 1942

Alan Turing the Runner

Marilyn Monroe the Runner