Letters to the Editor
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Non-marathoner
I have flat feet, the weakest of ankles, and tender knees. I can't run to the bus. I have nothing but awe and admiration for people who can push their bodies to complete these marathons.
(Though I wonder if flat feet, the weakest of ankles, and tender knees are in their future..)
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lies, damned lies, and statistics
McClelland uses Ryan Hall, "the swiftest American-born marathoner ever," to show how Americans are suffering when it comes to competition in the marathon. He points out, rightly, that Hall's fastest time is not even in the top 250 (it's number 255). What he omits, though, is that Hall's fastest time is actually his only time, as Hall has only run one marathon. Thus, Hall, who came of age in the past 10 years, those years that Oprah had supposedly crushed all American runners' competitive spirit, finished less than 4 minutes behind the fastest marathon time ever in his first 26.2 mile race. For some reason, I'm just not buying the logic here. Quite often, it's not the statistics a writer includes that are the important ones.
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Ironman as well!
Marathon is not the only sport that has happened to. Ironman has gone through the same thing. It used to be a race. Now it is an event to finish. Every Ironman TV show has special interest features about the person who lost a ton of weight, has a life threatening disease, and/or physically handicapped. They rarely show the actual race anymore. Everybody now wants to train a few weekends and then slog through a 16+ hour Ironman, only to leave the sport because they accomplished it while never bothering to actually get good!
But lets be serious, marathon and Ironman quit being sporting events a long time ago. They are now marketing events. What marathon is going on this weekend? The ING marathon! Ironman, while developing its own name - Timex Ironman watches anyone? - also is the Ford Ironman.
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re: How Oprah ruined the marathon
I suggest you try bike racing. Unlike participation in a running race, if you don't win, you ain't squat- a nobody, a loser. Even in the lowly cat 5 field which are primarily beginners, no one races to just finish. There are very few, if any Oprahs.
bike racer / NYC
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Bill Rodgers signed my bib at the LA Marathon, and you are no Bill Rodgers
I am proud to say that I successfully completed the 2006 LA Marathon by walking the entire way, in 7.5 hours. Even if you're not running, 26.2 miles is a killer distance, and even if you're very fit and have trained diligently, you will have blisters, aches, pains, and soreness to varying extents. At the time, I was thrilled to finish something that was sooooo
long, although I thoroughly enjoyed meeting many great people wearing the t-shirts of the charities they were representing, donning interesting costumes or carrying signs, as well as the thousands of volunteers on the sidelines cheering, playing music, and yelling out my name to spur me forward. It was great. I'm sure the frontrunners weren't slapping hands with the onlookers, as we had the time to do. As it took almost eight hours to finish, I thought I'd be one of the last ones, but there were still thousands of people behind me, just as intent on finishing as I was, and it was so unifying and positive. At the Expo preceding the Marathon day, I met Bill Rodgers, now retired, who was selling his books and talking about his running history, and even he, a four-time winner, was so supportive of this desire to achieve an extreme-sport goal and to reach a greater fitness level than was previously held. He never expressed or even alluded to a belief that the amateurs have degraded the race. The winners are still the winners, and they're serious enough to take 1-2 years off from work/school/activities to train to win the marathons and the prize money pays for their lack of earned income during that period. Even the tv coverage of the marathons ends after the first men and women runners cross the finish line, but those stragglers are still out there dragging themselves to the line for that finishers' medal hours after the media has gone.
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well
I will never be more than a recreational runner. I can maybe do 3 miles in 30 minutes if I don't get distracted by the poor selections of my iPod's shuffling. So I am entirely unqualified to talk about running, I suppose.
But I am a top-notch musician in top-notch ensembles at one of the best music schools in the country. As much as I may patronize community orchestras that have difficulty pulling together a Strauss waltz or Finlandia, as much as I may cringe when I have to listen to a mediocre high school band butcher the latest Eric Whitacre transcription, I would never, ever suggest that people doing what they love... even if they aren't great at it, and even if they might be technically dragging the average down for the Josh Bells and Yo-Yo Mas of the world... I would never, ever begrudge them the opportunity to do what they're doing.
Not everyone in this world is cut out to be more than an amateur. But the contempt we often treat amateurs with is alarmingly meanspirited. Especially when you consider that most professionals and others of the so-called "elite" in almost any field were once amateurs or nurtured by them.
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What's the Beef?
In a country where obesity is epidemic, the author complains about people running marathons?? Am I missing something?
I mean, it's not like 37,000 Americans are competing for the Olympics. People who are the elite still have elite events. Who cares if the "average time" of public events goes down? So what?
This whole argument reminds me of fundamentalists who claim that gay marriage ruins marriage for them. Because Fred and Sam are married, somehow, in some mysterious way, that ruins marriage for the fundamentalist.
Likewise, it's absurd to think that "ordinary" people running a marathon somehow ruins the experience for the elite athletes. The elite folks barely even see the ordinary people after the starting line. They finish an hour or two before even the fastest of the ordinary. Strange article.