Has there ever been a better day for the Free Press marathon? Not a chance. There was an all-time record participation. And there was an all-time, holy-moly-look-at-the-weather day, too.

That's some mighty magic Pat Ball and Doug Kurtis brewed up in their cauldron.

All week long the weather folks warned that Sunday, marathon day, was going to see rain: steady, won't-stop rain. Even as the 13,000-plus runners, walkers and wheelers - some 3,000 more than the record crowd of a year ago - were gathering outside Comerica Park, the weather folks on the radio were talking rain, rain, rain.

Whatever Doug and Pat did, whatever promises they made to the heavens or devil himself, whether they sold their souls or just promised to be good for the rest of the year, it worked.

Rosy streaks of light started filling the sky as the throngs of marathoners took off on Adams. By the time the 5Kers began, things were faintly-blue overhead. For the rest of the day, the sun beat down from a deep-blue sky. Heck, there wasn't even much wind. By Belle Isle, at least, the leaves on the trees were motionless, and at the various places the runners could see the Detroit River, it had barely a shimmer, just enough of a ripple to look like old glass. How about those leaves, eh? A hot summer and warm fall meant the latest color season in memory. A lot of the trees along the way were still green, with enough maples going bright red or yellow to make the views even more spectacular.

Just a magic, magic day in a city that has seen far too little in recent years, a morning of glory in a town fallen on hard times, rocked by scandals in City Hall, shaken by Delphi's bankruptcy, terrified by a hemorrhaging population, afraid to think of upcoming police and fire layoffs, embroiled in a nasty mayoral campaign and mudslinging. For one morning and half an afternoon, the magic won.

The magic of remembering a marathon in decline just a few years ago, when fewer than 2,000 bothered to sign up, and seeing crowds so thick it took the last of the marathoners 15 minutes to cross the starting line.

The magic of seeing Ralph Judd, diagnosed with cancer but fighting it the way those who know him would expect, heading out once more to cover 26.2 miles of Detroit and Windsor streets, just as he has every year the race has been held, running it the first time in 1978 without any training to speak of, then becoming one of the most serious trainers you'd meet, running 2:53 marathons in his 50s and race-walking the course when injuries wouldn't let him run. (He would finish, of course, in 5:56:50.)

The magic of seeing Tony Filippis, 90 now, the indominitable, truly beloved patriarch of Wright & Filippis, who's paid out a fortune over the years in prize money and hotel rooms for wheelers from around the world, sitting in his own motorized wheelchair and jokingly threatening to run down his friends if they got in his way.

"I've been selling these things for 30 years, now, and I don't know how to drive 'em," he said, in all seriousness.

During the Depression, Tony traveled the state with his hand-carved prosthetics, showing them to doctors, drumming up business. One day, he came across a doctor who had a patient who wanted a prosthetic lower leg, and wanted it now.

Tony, who'd lost both his lower legs as a kid when he tried to hop a train and fell under its wheels, was an old-school businessman. Close the deal. Always be closing. He took off his left leg, it fit the patient and the sale was concluded.

What he didn't tell the doctor or patient was he had a stick shift, and he had to head halfway back across the state to Detroit, and the left leg he'd sold was the one that worked the clutch.

Somehow he made it back.

Let's see ... oh, yeah, the magic of walking onto Ford Field, spectators beginning to file in, just in time to catch winners of the 5K, Romania native Ovidiu Olteanu of Wixom finishing second for the men by 23 seconds to Richie Brinker of Clarkston (14:55), and then bragging to Tim Broe, the Olympic 5,000-meter runner who trains with Ron Warhurst in Ann Arbor and was handling microphone duties for michiganrunner.tv, that he was just an old guy of 35, that his wife, Denisa Costescu, was the future.

And, speaking of future, she had just found out she was two months pregnant with their future. Didn't slow her a bit. Costescu won handily for the women in 18:49. "I haven't seen the doctor yet, but I took the test," she said with a beaming smile.

Outside Ford Field, the magic of a new chant by spectators urging home 5K finishers: No "You're looking good" for her, or "You're almost there," she was hollering: "There's free latte at the finish line!"

And the magic of Anthony Heckmeyer, 57, of Northville, a blind runner who did the 5K with his dog, Guido. No problem, Heckmeyer told reporters at the finish, except the dog couldn't figure out what his master was doing in the street. "Guido kept trying to get me back up on the sidewalk," he said.

Over on Jefferson, there was magic galore. The Detroit River, for instance, looking so blue as it coursed past Belle Isle it reminded me of delegates who asked me in a downtown bar during the 1980 Republican convention that nominated Ronald Reagan, "Did they dye the river for the convention?" Where they were from, river water didn't come in that color.

The magic of memory, of seeing a man leaning against a light pole at mile 16, trying to stretch calf muscles already cramping, and knowing the feeling - knowing not only the pain, but the disappointment of being there, up against a pole, with so many miles to go.

The magic of running with my black lab, Maddie, who loves to run and was ecstatic to see so many runners for the first time in her life, running with me four miles up and down through the warehouse district, a smile, I swear to God, plastered to her face, and any time I stopped to talk to someone - my mom, calling out splits at 16, or a spectator - her grabbing her leash in her mouth and pulling me along, insisting we get running again.

The magic of being there when the three-hour and 3:15 marathoners were going by and hearing an eerie silence, everyone listening to internal dialogs, monitoring blood sugar or thirst or weariness, focused internally and externally, on a target still double digits away.

Silence but for the sound of shoes on blacktop. There goes Mike Stone, a stone bulldog in his 50s who is as consistent a runner as there is in the state, a professional dancer whose son plays in the NFL. (He finished in 3:14:46.)

Wait, someone's saying something to his friend, a tone of dismay as he hears my mom call out the split: "We're running 8:40s, now." The 3:30 pace setter, banner in hand, is 50 yards ahead of them, pulling away, running eights.

Hey, there goes Lenny Constantine, an old friend I haven't seen in years, back running again. More magic memories. He ran his first marathon back in the day when the Run Thru Hell offered a marathon and half-marathon. He'd never run a marathon before and had entered the half, but had so much fun in the heat on those washboard country roads that he kept on going and did the second loop, too. I once got Runner's World to do a blurb on him and Kevin Baur, both of them running 140 races a year and in the fall a marathon a weekend.

Then there's the time-warp magic of watching Maggie Zidar go by, with the same quick-turnover, short-stride form she had 20 years ago, and the same pace, too. (She would finish first for women 55-59 in 3:34:48, the same time she was doing in her mid-30s.)

And the magic of being there as the four and 4:30 marathoners go by, hearing lots of conversation. They're not so focused, or maybe the word is fixated. Jokes are being shared, introductions made. The 4:30 pacer telling those around him he'd done seven marathons, three in Detroit, and they gave him free entry, hotel room and running outfit with a pace sign. "So, that's cool," he says.

"I've got three kids," one woman says to another. "They're 8, 5 and 2."

And the not-so-magic pervasiveness of the cell-phone culture. Can't people go anywhere, do anything, without staying in touch? Runners, not a few, going by with one hand holding a phone to an ear, telling someone where they're at and what they're doing.

The 4:30 marathoners head onto the island and I keep heading east on Jefferson, now running with the dog alongside folks who are at mile 21. One guy, in pain, about done in, is walking, a big sign affixed to his back: "In memory of Frank Skrabukna. Patience, perserverance, prayer."

His perserverance, at least, will be tested today.

The runners turn left on Burns into historic Indian Village, with its stately, restored mansions. The sun is intensely bright. The street is lined with trees, all still thick with green leaves that form a dense canopy and cast down a dark tunnel of shade. If you took a picture of the sky overhead and the sun on the trees and the dark, dark tube of shadow swallowing the runners and showed it to someone, you'd swear it was mid-August.

A magic view in mid-October. MR