Site Presented By
Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
Ask ten random non-runners who's going to win any given marathon, and you'll get back the answer, "Probably some guy from Kenya."
The perception that most Americans are laboring under a profound genetic disadvantage when it comes to distance running is what's responsible for the lack of serious American-born competitors. It's not Oprah's fault.
After all, the hordes of amateurs in other sports don't prevent serious competitors from going for the gold.
For all but the most serious runners (like you, I guess), running is a "personal best" sport. Focus on your game and on those with whom you feel competitive. Don't worry about the rest of us. We're not going to trip you as you zoom by. We'll be too busy staggering.
Enjoy the race!
Sorry to have been such an intrusion.
I think your article is patronizing beyond belief and does not take into account the facts. First as a long time runner I run to kill and I have medals to prove it. It took me two years to train for the only marathon I have been able to run and I look at it as a tremendous accomplishment. There are very few runners who can break records but that does not mean that all of us are taking our sweet time putting in the miles. There are a whole lot of competitive American runners doing their damndest to beat the Kenyans.
Second, the Kenyans are truly an anomaly. It is not just American runners who have difficulty beating them, and yes I know there are some who have.
I know some of the young runners who will compete in the Olympic trials and they literally have made it their life. I used to read Bingham's column in Runner's World every month and it was a consolation as I got older and could not keep up the pace. If he gets just one person out for a run he will have done as much as the runners who set records. After all most of us know from the get go that we will never break a record. It is great to try however.
Give me a fucking break. Is McClelland seriously trying to say that Americans don't win marathons anymore because so many people can do it now? Do the Red Sox avert their eyes when they go past a corporate softball game in case their spirit is irreversibly harmed by a bunch of beer-drinking middle managers desecrating their sport? He's just whining because many years ago, running a marathon was a rare achievement, something that only serious athletes and the slightly crazy would do. He stood out. Now, he's just one of many. Boo hoo, Mr. McClelland. You're not as amazing as you thought you were. I don't know why American elites aren't winning marathons anymore, but it's not because their spirits are broken. And if it is--then they deserve to lose to someone with more guts.
I'm not a marathoner--I had hopes to be, but I was recently diagnosed with a serious condition that precludes me from long-distance running. But I have friends who run marathons, some in times that McClelland would respect, others that he would scorn. They're all athletes worthy of immense respect. They don't need some washed-up curmudgeon denigrating their effort. Why did Salon give him this space?
You've got to be kidding...Oprah ruined marathon running? What's with the so-called purists claiming lethal dilution of the purity of the sport when amateurs wish to run the same course and, for a brief moment, compete with the world's best in something, anything, once. And what's this all about, Salon? Are we trying this hard to sell the product on the basis of these bait-and-switch headlines which I thought might just be confined to the right wing hate machine? Oprah? C'mon. What next...she caused the failed policy in Iraq, too?
Since when does everything have to be a self-help or triumph of the spirit charade?
It's the same with dieting. the new diet guru says "we don't have to exercise" that it is a myth that people who keep weight off exercise. Whatever. Just more lazy americanism.
Quit the whining. So what if the average time has dropped? Has it harmed you? Does the aesthetics of slower runners offend your sensibilities?
We're waiting. If you think it's no longer serious test, run longer (hey, the Penguin crowd hasn't found the Marathon Des Sables yet), add some more sports (or does the fact that almost 10K of us in the US alone do Ironman races also bug you?) or get ready and go into multiday adventure races.
"How sluggish newbies ruined the marathon." Gabriel Sherman. Slate. September 22, 2006.
http://www.slate.com/id/2149867
This was not a spindly 24-year-old Yalie gliding through Old World Munich. This was a middle-aged woman hauling her flab around the District of Columbia.
I can't help but think of how insulted Jonathon Franzen was when Oprah picked him to be her book club selection a few years ago. Why is it that whenever Oprah breaks into a traditionally male, make that white male dominated field, she gets insulted? She's destroying the purity of the field. Give a smart, populist, rich, black, middle aged woman a break. The Oprah Line is no small potatoes, she worked hard for it, and if she's the inspiration some people need to pull on their gel-soled shoes and hit the trail every morning, then good for her. Judging from all available statistics, America needs more (not fewer) non-professional athletes....and non-professional readers too, for that matter....
Rarely have I read anything in Salon that was so far off the mark.
Here's what's really bugging the author: completing a marathon no longer makes you part of the running elite. People don't regard you as a different and superior species just because you have the t-shirt. The snob appeal is gone. Get over it.
As for the ludicrous implication that the slower runners aren't putting their full effort into the race: I once heard Bingham at a lecture, recounting a post-marathon dinner he had had with one of The Elite Kenyans. He told it like this:
"He asked me what my time was. I said, 'five and a half hours.' He looked at me and said, 'My God! How can you run for so long?'"
The media outlet's use of Bush euphemisms sparks a much-needed debate on journalistic standards.
The Wasilla soap opera just gets weirder as Palin complains critics are "picking apart a good point guard"
And so are his Fox News pals, who lambasted Sen. Al Franken's "stolen election"
An inflexible right wing is allowing the Golden State to drown in debt. But it's not alone
Thanks for sharing, Governor. Now please take a cue from Norm Coleman, and go away
Salon headlines in your mailbox
