Adrian Peterson wins New York Marathon

NEW YORK, N.Y.–A surprise entrant in Sunday’s New York Marathon ended up winning the whole thing, as Adrian “Thesaurus” Peterson edged out Martin Lel of Kenya and Morroccan Abderrahim Goumri to win the annual race in a time of 2:08:47.

“I’m pretty happy to have won the New York Marathon today,” Peterson said. “It’s something that I always wanted to do, and I thought, if I could run it in under 2 hours and 10 minutes, then I could still get back to Minnesota for our game today against the Chargers. So I just decided to do that. Then, when I realized that I was going to finish in plenty of time, I just decided, ‘What the hell, I’ll go ahead and win it.”

“That guy is fast,” said Goumri. “I had all I could handle with Lel, and then all of a sudden this guy just goes crazy. I feel like he could have run it in an hour and a half if he wanted.”

Not everyone was thrilled with Peterson’s foray into distance running. Vikings head coach Brad Childress was furious after the game when he learned that Peterson had run 26.2 miles earlier in the day.

“Now it’s evident why AP was dragging such ass out there today,” Childress said. “Fine, so he rushed for 296 yards, setting an NFL record. Great. So he scored three touchdowns. Mazel tov. What else did he do for us today? Nothing. He didn’t return kicks, he was barely involved in the passing game, and he lost a fumble. Or had you all forgotten about that?”

Other Vikings echoed Childress’ concern. “It’d be nice if he took football a little more seriously,” said punt returner and third string tailback Mewelde Moore. “We got lucky today and won the game in spite of his lackluster effort, but that might not happen every time. If this guy wants to be in the league for a long time, he’s really going to have to make more of an effort.”

Peterson could not be reached for comment. He said he probably won’t run another marathon during the NFL season, but wouldn’t count it out. “Things are going well right now, and that’s great, but you never know what could happen. You can’t just play football for the rest of your life. I have to think about life after football, and being a world class distance runner may be a part of that life.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!