EWK

It’s June 26, I’m 17 hours into the Death Race, and, all in all, I’m still feeling pretty strong. A barbwire gash on my head has coated one side of my face with blood, but as I told the medic in my best Monty Python falsetto, “It’s a mere flesh wound.” My back no longer feels as if the vertebrae are being crushed, but the pain in my knees is definitely worse. It’s not raining (at the moment), and my one-person pit crew—stalwart wife, Sue—is running alongside me, pushing peach slices into my slack-jawed mouth. I know I can finish this race. What I don’t know is that this is the last time I’ll feel good for a month.

On the western edge of Frozen Head State Park, just before dawn, a man in a rust brown trench coat blows a giant conch shell. Runners stir in their tents. They fill their water pouches. They tape their blisters. They eat thousand-calorie breakfasts: Pop-Tarts and candy bars and geriatric energy drinks. Some of them pray. Others ready their fanny packs. The man in the trench coat sits in an ergonomic lawn chair beside a famous yellow gate, holding a cigarette. He calls the two-minute warning.

Is New York too New York for bike lanes?

 What is it about cyclists that can turn sane, law-abiding drivers into shrieking maniacs? The author ponders the eternal conflict with help from bike supercommuter Joe Simonetti, who each week survives the hostile, traffic-clogged rat race between the New York exurbs and Midtown Manhattan. 

With his NBA career over, his marriage in trouble, and rumors swirling about drinking and money problems, the greatest Sixer of his era finds himself playing minor-league basketball in Turkey and spending his nights at a T.G.I. Friday’s in Istanbul. Isn’t it, weirdly, exactly how we always thought it would end for Allen Iverson?

Exiled from the NBA, vilified by the press, and ridiculed for a serious of questionable YouTube videos (eating Vaseline? c’mon!), Stephon Marbury is seeking redemption—and vast riches—in basketball-mad China. Now, if he can just win over his Communist bosses, he’ll be the biggest thing since Yao Ming.