Like most white men who have been afforded some status because of their physical prowess, McClelland reprises the very tired argument that fat people (I'm reclaiming the "F" word, by the way) will ruin the aesthetic terrain of sports events (or the gym, or other public places where exercise occurs) by their presence.

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't catch-22 that should raise the hackles (and suspicions) of everyone. So, fat people shouldn't exercise in public, or, if they do, dare to face the wrath of the fit who will point fingers and make fun of them either directly or behind their backs?

Alternatively, if the pressure to stay away from opportunities to exercise works as well as McClelland might hope, the evil "fatties" will stay indoors so as not to offend the sensitivities of him and his ilk of uber-runners?

Am I getting this right so far?

When people who are fat stay indoors to avoid the inevitable finger-pointing and juevenile giggling, they get labeled as couch potatoes, beginning the cycle anew.

This is elitism at its best,and represents what I think is the zenith of body hatred in this country. It seems, at least in the response to this article, that American's are finally get fed up with this illogical binary.

Get off your high horse McClelland. Salon, what a disappointment.

How dare Ed write about average people not having the right to get off the couch and achieve something special. As a very average athlete who competes in Ironmans and marathons, I am inflamed by the writer's words.

These mere mortals accomplishing milestones in their life, make babies. Where does the author think the next great generation of runners is going to come from. If we relegate our couch potatoes to the davenport, how are our youth to be inspired to hit the trails?

In the worlds of running and triathlon we hear arguments like this from time to time and they are always meaningless. How on earth would the slower finishers either diminish the winner's accomplishment or slow the field down? The true elite athletes know that what they do is completely the result of their own training plus good coaching and good genes, not what somebody finishing 1-5 hours later does. These truly elite athletes also know that the slower finishers are what keep their sport alive and produce more sponsorship dollars that allow the elite athletes to continue training and representing their country in their sport. If you want to find somebody to blame for the lack of winning marathoners, look to the development programs of US Track and Field and the Olympic Committee. The slow and first time athletes are not standing there barring the door to athlete development.

Whenever these articles are written, it is always by some mid-packer, never the winner. The winners have much more sense than to bite the hands that help support them by buying the sponsors' gear. If this author were truly an accomplished age group athlete, it wouldn't even occur to him to write this drivel. He would be too busy training, racing, and encouraging all his fellow athletes, because that is what they do.

We should instead be encouraging all the athletes, including the box-checkers, the joggers, and the flabby middle aged ladies and gentlemen who look within themselves to see what they are made of. We are a society of overweight pre-diabetics who need all the role models we can get, including gazzilionairs like Oprah.

This is just a cynical piece of garbage that used Oprah's name to try to get us to read it. It makes Salon look irrelevant.

You given voice to one of the most intractable predjudices in this country: the prejudice against overweight people. Everyone agrees that the solution to "our looming health crisis" is for overweight people to exercise more. Everyone agrees, that is, until a fat women is seen running in public, subjecting real atheletes to the sight of her "flab".

As a fat middle-aged women I'd like to suggest that we find another fat middle-aged women to pick on. Oh that's right, there aren't very many fat middle-aged woman in the public eye. Wonder why? We're a pretty big segment of the population.

When people feel free to blame Oprah for everything from dumbing down the american novel to ruinning sports it makes her a hero in my eyes. Not because she can run a marathon or a conglomerate, but because she has the courage to get out of bed in the morning and face the onslaught.

I'm a musician and I see this sort of attitude among the musicians I know on the festival circuit. The musicians with real talent - the ones for whom music is a joy and a pleasure, who love to play and who love to make music for its own sake - are always very encouraging of the amateurs. One of them, a phenomenal pianist, always invites some kid up on stage to play a tune during his sets.

The ones who get all up in arms about amateurs are typically the ones with less talent - musicians who feel somehow inadequate or inferior to the truly talented ones, and who, as a result, can't enjoy the talent they do have because they are so consumed with envy. It's never pretty, and the cause of the attitude is pretty clear.

I never thought that this snobbery could apply to running, but I guess it works the same way. (I'm not a runner at all, and certainly never going to run a marathon, so Mr. McClelland is safe from me at least). Note that the Kenyans who are winning these marathons, at least according to the article, seem to be perfectly OK with the crowds of slow amateurs. They don't care; they don't have anything to prove. It's the ones like Mr. McClelland who feel inadequate and therefore whale on the amateurs.

I admire those amateurs. I think that staggering across the finish line is quite a formidable goal in itself.

Note, incidentally, that Mr.McClelland is not a professional writer, and therefore, by his own standards, should leave the writing for the professionals. One could write just as scathing an article about how America's high journalistic standards have been wrecked by feel-good amateur "journalists" like Mr.McClelland whose only goal is to get some verbiage published.