Paul Ryan's marathon

No one knows because it is a lie.

No-one called Paul Ryan from WI on Athlinks and he has lived there his whole life.

HH: That’s okay. Hey, in high school, what did you do in high school? Were you a speech and debate guy? Were you a bandie? What were you?

PR: No, I was student government and athletics, honor society, you know, that kind of thing. I was kind of a combination. I was class president my junior year, I was the school board rep my senior year. I lettered in varsity, you know, my first year in high school, mostly soccer and track. I was a distance runner and a soccer player. So kind of well-rounded. I can’t, I can play a cowbell. That’s about it for instruments.

HH: Are you still running?

PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.

HH: But you did run marathons at some point?

PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.

HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?

PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.

HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University.

PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

HH: I got so much email when I referred to it as Miami University of Ohio, and you know, I’ve got ties to Miami University, but they wanted me to call it The Miami University. You’re Delta Tau Delta, right?

PR: Right, right.

HH: All right, now I spent a few nights in the rack room at the Pike House in the 70s, and you guys had some fun at Miami. Do we have to worry about any stories coming out of Oxford?

PR: No, no, normal clean-cut college fun. You know, the rack room that I had slept in is about, I don’t know, you could hit it with a hard ball from the Pike rack room. It’s maybe a hundred yards.

If he was younger when he ran his marathons it is very possible that the times are not on the internet. He played soccer and ran distance in high school so a 2:5X would definitely not be out of the question.

He probably omitted the "half" portion of the race title. He is loosey goosey on details, as we saw in his speech last night.

Randy Oldman wrote:

HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?

PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.

BS artist. A runner that doesn't know his PR's?

Bullshite.

Since when do LRCers act like a 2:5x is fast?

I guess ever since he started P90X he can't handle the 'thon.

sniff test wrote:

BS artist. A runner that doesn't know his PR's?

Bullshite.

Gotta agree with this. Maybe the marathon was only 20 something miles long.

Randy Oldman wrote:

No-one called Paul Ryan from WI on Athlinks and he has lived there his whole life.

You realize that a lot of races have been run that aren't on Athlinks right, especially if Ryan is talking about something he did in his 20's.

Probably a half marathon.

Agree. Totally implausible that he wouldn't remember his marathon PR.

I discussed this with my colleague, also a running geek, and these are the possible explanations we came up with:

--He considers his PR slow and doesn't want to reveal it.

--He didn't want to look like a running geek obsessed with his PR. (Runners understand that of course you know your PRs, but non-runners listening to the interview might not. He might be playing to that audience.)

--There's something about the marathon he ran that makes him reluctant to give details about it and/or to consider his PR legit, like the course was later revealed to be short.

--He actually never broke three but he really, really wanted to, and he couldn't resist the urge to pad his time, figuring, "If I say it was two fifty something and imply I don't remember, I'll have an out if someone accuses me of outright lying. I can say I didn't remember."

Yes, we actually spent time weighing these scenarios.

For what it's worth, I'm generally a split-ticket voter and don't really have a dog in this fight.

He cut the course short like our good friend Connie Mendoza.

You guys are really convinced that a guy who isn't a die-hard runner couldn't possibly forget the exact time he ran in a race 20+ years ago?

PRs are super important! wrote:

You guys are really convinced that a guy who isn't a die-hard runner couldn't possibly forget the exact time he ran in a race 20+ years ago?

How do you know it was 20+ years ago? He's only 42.

Lying sack, is he.

PRs are super important! wrote:

You guys are really convinced that a guy who isn't a die-hard runner couldn't possibly forget the exact time he ran in a race 20+ years ago?

Yes.

It's not like he ran dozens of Marathons, and 20 years ago you were more hard core than these days, you weren't gallowalking for a charity.

No way you forget your time if you only ran 1 or 2 Marathons.

I'd bet he never even ran as much as a half, and he pulled that time out of his ass.

PRs are super important! wrote:

You guys are really convinced that a guy who isn't a die-hard runner couldn't possibly forget the exact time he ran in a race 20+ years ago?

I've sent an email to the interviewer, Hugh Hewitt, asking him to tell us the location and date of the marathon.

Additional possibility: he bandited, and is glossing the details to avoid having to say so.

I think that one aspect of his answer that is being neglected is the bragging aspect of a specific time. Imagine if he had said, "Yeah, I ran one in 2:56." It would probably come across much more as a boast, which would be particularly bad considering he doesn't run as much anymore.

Marathons are the type of thing that many people just non-stop talk about to people who have no interest in doing it. It puts a lot of people off.

Calling major BS on his marathon time. I went through Marathonguide.com and did not find anything from 2000 to present. He graduated from college in 1992 and first got into congress in 1998. He certainly couldn't have run a sub 3 marathon while campaigning or serving in the House. So, his marathons had to be between 1992 and 1998 (no one runs a marathon in college). He allegewent to DC just after school and allegedly moonlighted as a personal trainer. So, odds are he would have done a marathon on the east coast or maybe near his hometown in Wisc. (Chicago?).

He is over 6 feet tall. He does not have a light frame. Running a sub 3 marathon would take some real serious training for him. I see him being a 3:10-20 guy at best when he was younger. I just don't see him putting in the miles given his claim to have been working lots of jobs when he lived in DC before getting elected.