From The Back of the Pack

"Teo From Argentina" — so identified atop the message imprinted on the back of his running shirt — had this one right.

"There is no disgrace in finishing last, only in unwillingness to dare to attempt the race in the first place," it seemed to say. Or something like that, anyway, as he shuffled down Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn.

That was the philosophical eloquence Teo brought to the Big Apple on Sunday — courtesy of the man at his silk-screening parlor — in Buenos Aires, Mar Del Plata,  Cordoba? I never did find out which it was.

Teo – the New York Road Runners’ computers told us – eventually arrived at 67th Street on the West Drive of Central Park — the 385th yard after the 26th mile — in six hours, 47 minutes and 57 second. He thus placed 46,238th of the 47,438 starters and 46,795 finishers in the ING NYC Marathon. And 351st of the 355 Argentines.

Despite those running-shirt message fears, he didn’t finish last, either. Or even close. There were 557 folks behind him.

Now the confession: yours truly was one of them.

Once upon a time, he  was fast. Fast enough to make an Olympic team, as a 50K racewalker. As the years rumbled on, so did he, but never again to exceed the speed limit. Fortunately, though, he had no problem with being half-fast. Never bothered him. Now he's quarter-fast. No problem there, either.

The delight of the day, the thrill of the challenge, everything about stepping to the starting line, the adrenaline rush of it all, have never left him. And that’s why he was right in there with Teo from Argentina, and 47,436 of our soulmates gathered from all 50 states and 117 other nations.

As Kenyans and Ethiopians (led by champions and Geoffrey Mutai and Firehiwot Dado) properly stole the headlines with their triumphs (he in a course-record 2:05:06, she in 2:23.15) there was glory in it for a whole lot of others, too.

Other than in their tweets to the folks back home, however, you weren’t about to read about these people.

So we’ll tell you about some of them right here.

There was Californian Joy Johnson, 84, the senior of all senior citizens in the race, running the five boroughs in 7:44:45. Her male counterpart — oldest gent still going the distance — was Floridian Norman Gould, 83, stepping the city in 8:29:41. New Yorker Moises Salama, a tad-younger 83-year-old, got to the line in a perky 6:48:47.

And how about that sensational Mr. Michio Kumamato of Japan?  At 80, he ran the city in a sizzling 3:56:30., beating oodles and oodles of the kids.

You had to put your hands together, too, for 56-year-old Brooklynite Alexis Davidson.

About mile 10, in his home borough, as he reported it, "I got clipped by a galloway (runner-walker.) Fell and landed on my face. Glasses dug into my temple and (there was) blood everywhere. Got picked up by Mile 11 Emergency Team. They applied temporary band-aids on my face and ice on my right hand; I hung out with them for about 45 minutes. They tried to get me to go to a hospital."

Of course, the very-dedicated Davidson (a fellow who has completed marathons in every American state and each Canadian province) wasn’t going to let that temporary distraction sway him from his appointed rounds. He got to the line in 6:13:20.

On Monday, he said, "Saw a doctor today. No apparent concussion or stitches. Broken bone connecting my wrist to my pinkie. I'll be doing my next four marathons with a cast."

Clearly, when the going gets tough, a guy like Alexis Davidson gets going.

Moving right along, too, were Andrea Cenni, Nymand Petersen, Ralph Wetzels and Sylvain Bosc.

Cenni (who finished in 2:56;51) was the lone delegate from San Marino, Petersen (3:20:58) from Greenland, Wetzels (4:30:10) from Brunei, Bosc (4:39:10) from Gabon.

As sole-mates, from big lands, small lands and far-off-the-beaten-path lands, they surely carried their national flags with honor.

Who couldn't help getting emotional seeing the vet with two prosthethic legs and one prosthetic forearm smiling his way around the boroughs? And oh-so-many others with major-league difficulties, woes that would have kept the less determined at home, but surely not these ladies and gentlemen refusing to let the passing parade of life trot on by. For sure, no one is going to relegate these resolute folks to back-row seats in either marathoning or other branches of the real world.

Once upon a time, the host New York Road  Runners shied away from charitable involvement. But now NYRR has fully embraced all these kind souls running their soles off for those who need help most.

An estimated 7,700 of the Sunday throng was there representing at least 210 very good causes, because they'd raised (or pledged to raise) at least 30 million bucks (thus breaking it down into more than a million per mile.)

If and when Alzheimer’s, autism, arthritis, AIDS, liver disease, malaria, stroke, lupus, diabetes, Parkinson’s Disease, Tourette Syndrome, spina bifida and assorted forms of cancer are ever beaten into submission, those 7,700 NYC marathoners can surely say "we helped get it done."

As devoted as any fund-raiser was 20-year-old Marie Walsh, who "ran this one for Uncle Eddie."

A former state parochial champion from Matawan, N.J., she took the weekend off from her studies and cross country team training at Houston's Rice University to run the first 26.2-miler of her life.

"Uncle Eddie" was Edward Felt, an active runner and sire of a running family, who'd gone down with the other heroes of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa. on 9/11/01.

Ms. Walsh had heard that fund-raising efforts for the Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville were running slowly, about a million dollars shy of target. So she couldn’t possibly let this opportunity slip on by.

She got to the finish line in 4:43:53, with the spirit of "Uncle Eddie" surely inspiring her through the boroughs and looking down with a very wide smile.

I don’t want to tell you my own finishing time. It was just awful. The first 20 miles were fun. Alexis Davidson got to tell me his story. Fellow road warriors from Australia and Zimbabwe, Jolly Old England and every state of New England, Indiana and Indonesia, New Zealanders and Venezuelans, the state of Georgia and the nation of Georgia — and oh-so-many more — were there for global company.

Lots of fun, slapping palms, down Bedford Avenue, up Lafayette, over the bridges, on and on and on...

Another situation: All of us — the slow gentlemen and ladies of the third wave, set off over an hour after the faster folks — were now contending with, and tippy-toeing over, the squashed water and Gatorade cups, and mashed banana peels and orange rinds, that were remnants of the armies that had preceded us. Any slip could mean very bad things.

The fun couldn't last. The cramps set in. First the adductors and then the calves. Then both hips and the lower back. Was it salt depletion or simple decrepitude, lack of training or routine marathonitis?

Whatever the cause, competitor No. 48-106 was now carrying a full-grown gorilla on his back.

His racewalking miles slipped from halfway respectable 14s to borderline-terrible 15s to just-awful 16s. And then, even worse.

By this stage, he needed to lean on some Central Park statuary and accept some quick massage, knowing full well — as an historian of this sport — that if this had been 1908 and he was named Dorando Pietri (who lost the Olympic marathon gold medal when he was aided over the finish line) that he would have been bounced out, too.

With infinite mercy, the finish line fortuitously appeared at 67th Street and Central Park's West Drive, not a second too soon.

He hadn't beaten Teo from Argentina, or Frits from the Netherlands, Nazario from Italy or Marjorie from New York, N.Y., either.

But finally he got there — by now early evening, the sun setting over Sheep Meadow, way too late in the game, setting a new PW (personal worst), yet still on time to stretch his finishers' streak to 33, every one of these races since 1979.

Then again, not on time to qualify for the free subway ride to Penn Station, the plan to catch the 8:07, and the attempt at de-cramping on the New Jersey Transit train ride home. "Sorry, that ended at 7 pm," said the unsympathetic 72nd Street tollbooth attendant.

True story. Eyewitness report. That’s the way it was at the far end of the pack. Nothing that Geoffrey Mutai and Firehiwot Dado would ever notice.