The People Who Watch Marathons.

Oh my god, this. This article on Jezebel. It sums it up perfectly.

The spectators — people who show up and cheer with noisemakers and high fives and encouraging cheers and magic-markered tagboard signs that read “YOU ALL ARE CRAZY! KEEP RUNNING!”— are the people who matter most to runners. Without those people, a marathon would just be an exercise in self-abuse from a large group of crazies. But there is meaning in marathoning: the people who watch.