This whole article stinks of elitism. Certainly Opra opened up the Marathon to a new generation of runners. Not everyone is going to be a 3 hour marathoner, or a 2:11 for that matter. Does that make them less of a runner that those that are? Of course not! We are all competing at a different level, most of us solely with ourselves.

You talk about how satisfying it was to come back from a knee injury and puke your way back to doing a 20 min 5k. I did a 20 min 5K last month with a seriously injured left knee. So, guess I could say your not much of a runner. There are alot of people who can do a 5k in 17 min or less. Whats your point? Where do you draw the line and say, ok this person is a runner, this person is ruining the sport?

Time goals are all relative. I ran the Hurley marathon this August with a time of 4:03. A bit slower than I had hoped, but the hills caught me off guard. I had planned to do a 3:30 in Milwaukee on October 7th. But after running Hurley in August I developed a knee injury. A month before the race I couldn't go 3 miles!!! But you know what, I wrapped my knee, took a bunch of anti-inflamatories, gritted my teeth and got a couple long training runs in before the race. The day of the race I got a bad stomach achee, my knee was hurting, at mile 19 a severe cramp destroyed my right calf muscle (one leg with a broken knee, the other with a destroyed calf) STILL I FINISHED THAT F*CKING RACE. It took me 5 hours 40 minutes, but you know what that was the hardest ive ever run. Much harder than my 20 minute 5k a month earlier, much harder than my 3:12 24 mile training run (a personal time best) Harder than my 9 mile 7 minute mile tempo runs.

How dare you denegrate other runners simply because we are not all at the same level. If your willing to lace up your shoes, risk public humiliation and run 26 miles (at any pace) you deserve some respect. This type of elitist attitude is something I would hope most of us grow out of, usually by the end of High School.