http://sport.guardian.co.uk/breakingnews/feedstory/0,,-7049727,00.html
"Britain's world record holder Radcliffe, running her first marathon in two years after taking a maternity break..."

What a wonderful article. I think this guy might have actually inspired a whole new fitness movement - among aesthetically unpleasing fat people like myself who are now going to "crowd the gravel paths" if for no other purpose than to piss off disgustingly elitist snobs like Edward McClelland.

In fact, I think I'm going to go out and train for next year's Atlanta Marathon - I'll target a time of about 5 hours even. And, I might even stop off at Krispy Kreme on the way home.

>What strikes me as really odd is the notion of encouraging people to begin their journey of "getting in shape" by training to do a marathon.<

Ugh. It's the same kind of attitude a heavy person gets in the more elitist health clubs/gyms, where the majority of folks is already slim and beautiful and act like you have some nerve screwing up the aesthetics of "their" place.

(two marathons, one for serious runners, the other for others). but i don't think it will fly. it's the NAME that brings in the bucks. does the special olympics get endorsements?

Imagine you are in a band. You aren't the beatles or even the Dave Mathews Band. You don't get paid much, but you play clubs and are pretty good and you think you are pretty cool.

Then someone starts a movement to have non-musicians start "bands" of triangle playing morons who come on stage and play the triangle and do so to some patronizing applause. Why not jump on stage and shake a tamborine and call it playing music and have people applaud? It is health positive and a good way to work off stress.

This movement becomes so prevalent that the meaning of "being in a band" becomes "being a non-musician who makes noise on a stage like a retard for patronizing applause."

Ofcourse real rock bands don't care since no one is confusing them with the new movement.

I'm sure Kenyan marathon winners don't sweat 6 hour marathoner either.

But for amature or semi-pro band members, the new phenomenon would kind of take some of the ego gratification out of claiming to be in a band, wouldn't it.

Maybe you think its tacky to want to brag about being a marathoner and bitching when fat slobs ruin if for you. YOu have to realize that even people who love doing something for its own sake, still want to feel cool when they identify themselves by their hobby.

Amature marathoners can't do that anymore and it sucks for them.

i just watched the pbs nova show about this too. they took various types of amateurs and worse and trained them to run the boston marathon. most of them were in pain and seemed to ruin various parts of their anatomy. so why blame oprah? i think the entire idea of testing oneself through some run or climb is insanity. no wonder the hero of the boomer set is that guy from alaska who lost his life , into the wild? a sad commentary all around. and now these types of runners are complaining that it is downscaling their elite accomplishment. how rather repulsive...

>Sports are - or should be - about participating in healthy activities, not worshipping the lucky and talented.<

And one of the reasons so many people in this country grew up hating gym and exercise in general is because too many P.E. teachers made teaching the most talented students their priority, not teaching _everyone_ to improve their skills. That attitude generated the "picked on in gym" problem that made life hell for a lot of non-athletically-sterling students--and it made a lot of the latter equate exercise with failure and insult.

music by kids. they were AWFUL (and everybody applauded like they never heard anything so great). bolstering self-esteem for its own sake is detrimental. to the music, to the kids. there USED to be really very good high school orchestras - no more. Joshua Bell once, on a bet, played his strad in a DC railroad station (L'Enfant Plaza) acting like a street musician. "In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

in school, especially considering how so many are overweight, PE ought to be geared to the lowest common denominator. you can still please everyone by saving the varsity for the talented. neilpaul, that url was too long, try search:|joshua bell DC| the wash post article is pearls before breakfast.

but you're going to be hard to beat in the douchebag championship, sport.

Whatever happened to that? Or actually being competitive in an activity?

I don't care how many out of shape people attempt a marathon, that's their insanity. But wouldn't they be better served by actually getting into shape intelligently, instead of making a fool of themselves by trying an approach to make them "feel good" about themselves?

We used to strive for excellence. Now we want to give praise to & give out awards to everyone that attempts something. No wonder we are mired in mediocrity. This pathetic attempt to make everyone feel "equal" is an insult to the ones that really do attempt to improve themselves, AS WELL AS to the person of average talent that doesn't have as much committment to the endeavour, & thus doesn't do more to become better at it than stumble across the line well after everyone else has gone home.

Sad, so very sad.

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?