I don't know if you have heard, but running a marathon has become as easy as reading the Sunday funnies. Yep, everyone is doing it: your 65- year-old neighbor, the manager at the local video store, your kid's third- grade teacher and maybe even your mom.

I have just one thing to say about that. Thanks. Thanks, you average, never-run-before-but-it-looks-pretty-easy, think-I'll-try-it-because-P- Diddy-did-it runners.

You've ruined it for the rest of us true marathoners. You've changed a once-hallowed endurance event from a stirring triumph over agony shared by a select group of overachievers (some would say manic overachievers) to a 26.2-mile tailgate party complete with maraca bands, celebrities and walkers.

Yes, walkers. My goodness.

Marathon training experts now recommend walking every so often during the race as the best way for first-time marathoners to complete a marathon. Walk? That's not marathoning. That's ... that's walking.

But how can these new runners know anything about a marathon? After all, these are the same runners who, when first learning I ran a marathon, asked the question: "Really, how far was that marathon? My cousin just ran in a five-mile marathon last weekend." These are the runners who have only one pair of running shoes. These are the runners who think "Boston" is just a city.

Now, these same runners are lining up next to me at the starting line wearing cotton t-shirts with some sport-team logo. One quizzically eyes his racing chip; another pins it to her race number, which is on her back. These same runners will ask me about those small silver packets stuffed in my pocketed shorts, which they think are pretty cool.

"Pockets on shorts?" they'll ask. "Wow, what will they think of next?" I'll tell them about GU and they'll give me a "huh ...?" and I'll know their brain is spinning with questions. The same ones I had before my first marathon. I'll smirk and tell them good luck.

The next time I see these people will be mile 11 or maybe 19. I'll pass them because they started too fast. I'll see their faces and remember seeing them at the start. I'll know this runner is a first-timer and that he or she never really knew what being a marathoner was about - until that moment.

Then, knowing that yes, this runner is probably not going to make it, I'll do what every veteran marathoner does: I'll give them a boost; I'll pat them on the shoulder; tell them to keep it up; tell them they look great; tell them they're almost home.

They won't say anything, but they will have heard me. And maybe, just maybe, they'll survive.

After the finish, as I stagger around wrapped in a silver cape sipping Gatorade staring at the mass of shaking legs, exhausted stares and tearful smiles, I'll realize that no matter how many I've run, or how much I've spent on shoes, a GPS watch and my cool pocket shorts, the race is still 26 miles, 385 yards - same for veterans and newcomers - and it doesn't take a fool to understand that's pretty darn far.

So I'm stuck with these thousands of new runners, walkers, "wunners" ... whatever you want to call them. I'm stuck; stuck with the 65-year-old neighbor who made it and the video-store manager who didn't.

And that's when I'll get it. I'm not stuck with them; we're stuck together. I now understand, as do these new marathoners, that completing a marathon (running, walking, crawling or any combination) is not as easy as reading the Sunday funnies.

But I don't have to tell these new marathoners. They feel it now. And they will continue to feel it tomorrow morning, and the next morning and the next.

But what I will tell them - these new friends - is congratulations, thanks (really, thanks) and welcome to the club.

Greg can be reached by e-mail at runrun262@hotmail.com. MR