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• Sunday, November 4, 2007 11:54 AM

  I think a lot of you are missing the point

  The author isn't trying to skewer any "real" runners - people who are out there day after day, year after year, running because they truly enjoy it and view the marathon as the ultimate test of their commitment and fitness.

  He's skewering Oprah and people of her ilk because they treat the marathon as a trendy fad - as someone else said, just one more thing to cross off life's checklist. Oprah running a marathon is like Oprah on her liquid diet - she looked fabulous for about five minutes but what happened when she started eating solid food again? How many marathons has Oprah run since her first? How much running does she do on a regular basis? How many people go on a diet just to go right off it again once they hit their goal weight?

  I admire Ms. Winfrey as much as the next person for her efforts to encourage people to develop healthy eating and exercise habits, but by suggesting that the average person should choose the marathon as their fitness goal is ridiculous.

  I was appalled at the recent "Nova" program about average joes taking on marathon training after being mostly sedentary. The majority of those people had no business running on the concrete in their condition. Any lifelong runner will tell you that every extra ounce of body weight puts enormous stress on the knees (to their credit, they did mention during the program that running was NOT an optimal way to lose weight), and I could almost see the shin splints and knee pain developing in those people with every stride they took. I also found it interesting that they made no mention of what the runners' eating habits were like. It all came off looking like some train wreck of a lab experiment with very predictable results. What I would really like to see is a follow-up program to see how many of those people continued running or - more interestingly - if any developed long-term physical problems because of their training.

  Marathons are NOT for everyone, Oprah or no Oprah. Marathon training is not a proper fitness regimen for most people, and will more likely lead to injury and disappointment. If you've been training for years and want to test yourself, fine, but for those of you on the sofa, why not just invest in a good treadmill instead?

  —evans evans Read evans evans's other letters
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