thanks tenfold to edward, and to salon for printing the truly inconvenient truth about American marathoning. he's absolutely correct about marathoning being appropriated by the whole self help community. i belonged to a running club in the mid 80s (when running clubs were about 'running faster', not 'finding a soulmate - or is that 'solemate'). to the serious recreational runner, turning a sub 16 minute 5ooo on the track is a far more serious endeavour than merely 'finishing' the marathon. you need both endurance AND speed to do the former. thing is, and i've given a lot of thought about this over the years, not everyone is built to be a runner. and even if you do have 'the build' (as i ONCE did), nagging injuries - $150 shoes be damned - will derail the best intentions. right now, i'm on my fourth pair of orthotics to 'cure' planatar fasciitis - the runner's true 'achilles heel.' no amount of cycling or pool running will give back the benefits of a good, hard 90 minute run with hills etc. i have personally only run two marathons - the first a sub 3 hour effort in British Columbia (Victoria International, for you running geeks out there). my pal and i went to NYC in 89 to attempt to crack 2:40 but we both - cocky in our natural speed, and competing all fall - sadly neglected the 'long' 3 hour plus training runs, and failed spectacularly - just over the 3 hour mark in 3:05. i have NEVER hurt like that in my life - cramps, puking, the whole gong-show.

edward's other points, though, about American marathoning are interesting but - here's where i hope i don't lose anyone - this is simply a race that americans cannot win. whether it's the altitude, their tribal culture, or whatever, to see kenyans, tanzanians, or other 120 lb African subcontinent superstars in action is to simply give up. (watch the opening five minutes of the documentary on Haile Gebraselassie - ENDURANCE - sadly, not in DVD yet, and you will see what i mean). i competed in races where top Americans and Brits were in the field - running their tight, focused, and compact styles. the africans would run all akimbo - arms flying, chests out, but from the waist down they were sheer poetry. in the same way that african football, er, soccer players are beginning to dominate the beautiful game, africans dominate running now in virtually all categories. is it genetics/race? given the fact that running is one of the 'simplest' physical tasks that we humans do, you have to wonder. and marvel at the sheer speed and endurance that they bring to the sport. and interestingly, NONE of 'em have ever flunked a drug test, that i'm aware of.

thank you again, edward, planatar fasciitis be damned, i'm heading out the door for an hour. best of luck to you, and other salonistas on the running path. and if someone sees the penguin waddling out there, drown him, willya?

wow, salon... get bent.

Finishing a marathon is no longer a feat, especially in our "everybody gets a trophy because we're all special" society.

Face it - if it takes you 6-7 hours to get around a 26.2 mile course, you're NOT an athlete. You're an average human being. It shouldn't take that long for anyone in decent health to cover that distance, even if they're walking a good part of the way. If you can't manage that, you're really out of shape and have no business being there in the first place. More of these races should take their cues from the Europeans and shut down the courses at five hours. If you haven't finished by then, you obviously haven't done your homework - better luck next year.

Of course, all the corporate-sponsored charity teams would never put with that - how many people do you think they could get to sign up to train for the NYC 26.2-mile Fitness Run? My guess is not many - because it's not about fitness, it's about getting the medal and bragging to the officemates, right?

And then heading straight back to the sofa.

Cheers.

Without the slowbies at the back of the pack, there would BE NO MARATHON. They pay fees. Those fees support the marathon structure, the purses, etc. They support the sport at the national and local level.

So shut up. WIthout slowbies running for a personal best, you wouldn't have such a nice assortment of races with amenities like water, permits, bathrooms, etc.

You can say that marathons are overrun by troglodytes so long as I can tell people they're too dumb to read anything by James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein or the rest of canonical literature. Sheesh, I thought elitism only occurred in the classroom.

What an annoying string of self-important, elitist nonsense. I love endurance sports – I’ve ridden my bike from Seattle to Portland (over 200 miles) in one day and turned in a good time – but I’ve never once been bothered by seeing new riders out on their bikes. So they want to challenge themselves with something new? More power to ‘em. It certainly won’t ruin the sport.

I sometimes thing Salon publishes articles like this just to irritate its readers and generate a response. What else can we blame Oprah for? What ever this very decent woman does there's going to be some jerk out there to criticize her for it. Too bad Salon has decided to give this one column space. This is not what I subscribed for...

Instead of blaming Oprah for Marathon Mania why don't you thank her? If she made marathon's more popular and more people participate it has probably upped the dollar amount most marathon's pay to winners which brings better quality runners to a lot of these races.

I think what makes elite runners angry is that at the end of the day pretty much any couch potato can run a marathon with some discipline and hard work which would make running not so elite right?