You have raised some really fine points about the evolving nature of the marathon and its participants. I think that an obvious solution would be to limit the number of runners in each contest by a qualifying time, as some races already do. The ING NY Marathon probably won't pursue that option because the organizers don't see a problem with a runner finishing in six hours. For a corporate sponsored event, more exposure, more runners and runner's families pushing them on, is the ultimate goal. Remove the sponsorship and add a qualifying time, and the NY Marathon might have a chance of recovering its competitiveness.

In a somewhat related but by far more disturbing way, I unfortunately noticed that marathons have become a staging ground for political messages. Rounding the corner in the Philadelphia Marathon a few years ago and approaching the 15th mile, I was disheartened by the large placards held by anti-abortion advocates that depicted graphic images of aborted fetuses. The whole road-side campaign seemed manipulative and totally inappropriate. Talk about wrecking competitive spirit.

No - it was that damn JFK if he didn't start that communist President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports oh no I mean Eisenhower, that good for nothing cut and runner is his fault we lost the war in Korea too. We should have nuked them when we had the chance.

Self pity doesn't become you Edward McClelland. Are you that insecure in your own ability that you must begrudge Oprah, or anyone else for that matter, their pursuit of happiness?

Reading this article I reminded of what Charles Schultz articulated through his timeless comic strip Peanuts and something all humorless, self-absorbed liberals and progressives would do well to avoid. "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand."

What this writer, and just about everyone else fails to grasp is what a self indulgent and useless activity this is--and what a colossal waste of time and energy. All these people spending hours and hours and hours running through the streets, in many cases ruining rather than improving their health. And why?

What if I, a wife and mother of 3, decided that instead of training for a marathon, I would spend 25 hours a week reading novels in a coffee shop. I'd leave all my houshold, work and family responsibilities behind and do something I felt like doing, hour after hour after hour. . . Something of no good to anyone--but of interest only to me. I'd be considered a very selfish person. But marathon running--oh that's somehow morally elevated. Heroic even. What bullshit. It's selfish and self-indulgent and yet another symptom of our vain and shallow society. Skip the running, take half the hours you would have spent destroying your joints and sending your overheated body into convulsions, and go visit people at your local prison, nursing home, homeless shelter, fill-in-the blank. At least then you'd actually have something real to be proud of.

OK, my husband, whom I admire greatly, has run several marathons and he finished in about 4 hours each time. When we ran concurrent events (one time, for example, I was competing in the half, which started at the same time) I was as happy for him when he finished as he was for me--and I WON my event overall. The thing I don't get, which this writer talks about, is why you would put in the time and effort to royally suck through a long event when you could put in the same time and effort and actually be GOOD at a shorter event. I also have done triathlons. I never did a half ironman or an ironman--I confined myself to Olympic distance or shorter--because the training I had time for was enough (in conjunction with my native athletic talents) for me to kick ass at those distances, but not enough to be competitive in longer races. My husband, as well, while running the occasional marathon, placed a lot of his effort into improving his 5 and 10-K times. Meanwhile, I knew a lot of people in the tri community who took up the sport and immediately decided to do a half ironman, while they could barely get through the shorter events in a reasonable time. Now, if you ask me, THIS is elitism. It's like a lot of people think shorter races are beneath them. I mean, why not celebrate quitting smoking by getting your 5-K time under 19 minutes? I'll tell you why--because the people you work with won't be as impressed as they will be by that marathon you spent 6 hours getting through, although the real athletic feat is probably the former rather than the latter. At this point, though, when you announce you've done a marathon, people say, "Oh, that's great, my parents just did one to celebrate their 50th anniversary," so it looks like folks will have to find another more grueling event that will carry the cachet.

Some people might say, "But I'm never going to be good at any running event! It is about the achievement of finishing for me!" The point is not that you'll WIN those 5-Ks--it's that given the training time most folks have, if you focus your training and use discipline, you will be MUCH more competitive at a shorter event that you would be at a marathon. And despite most people's protestations that's it's about finishing and that competition is evil and so on, I think you'll have that little spark awakened in you. Who knows, you might end up enjoying it!

Although I can sympathize with the author's early aspirations to become an accomplished long-distance runner, I feel there's more than a hint of snobbishness in the article.

I grew up in the same small town in Taos, New Mexico where Frank Shorter trained for the Olympics. His parents were medical professionals and were considered real down-to-earth types. It's difficult for me to imagine that Frank Shorter would have felt that running in a marathon somehow made him superior or more elite than your average runner.

I think the author is frustrated by suffering an injury early on in his life that prevented him from reaching his true potential.