One of the fellas started a thread yesterday about Kara Goucher's training for the NYCM under a new/old coach, and some of you couldn't wait to change the subject to her various new sponsors, especially Oiselle, and rattle on about how she's only running for the money and has no plans to put forth a decent effort. This, in spite of the fact that she says she's putting in more than 100 miles a week and claims to be in good, although not career-best, shape (usually, when runners are deluding themselves and others about this, they go all-out and say that they might just run a big PR, or something like that). Since the beginning of 2012, she's finished sixth at Boston and 11th at the Olympics, with three marathons of 2:28 or faster.
What about any of this constitutes "mailing it in"? You can argue that she's too old to run fast anymore (even if she's a veritable toddler compared to Jen Rhines, Deena, Meb and Lagat) but that is a much different contention than the idea that she's merely trying to get a big pay-out the lazy way.
The same thing has happened with Lauren Fleshman. She had a kid, came back, got a deal with Oiselle. Maybe not in that order. The talk on here about Lauren has always been negative and illogical even by Letsrun.com standards -- possibly because being unsuccessful in life seems to elude her and not the folks here, a hopelessly easy argument to make -- and lately it's been more of the same. She ran 33:32 at Peachtree, not exactly her best distance, ahead of Desi Davila (where's the hate for her here? What's she done lately?). She's all of 32.
I'm not saying that anyone here is necessarily wrong if the argument is "they'll never be as good as they once were." -- that's also an easy argument to propose about anyone who has been around a while and been to some high places in the sport. I'm saying that people here seem to be in an unofficial contest to say the dumbest things possible. The accusation that neither of them is trying is plain ridiculous and would be even if neither runner had results or training numbers to cite -- why would anyone use "she ain't trying" as a baseline assumption? And if there's any truth to the "running just to impress her sponsors" talk, well, isn't that sort of the point? Like, maybe they even have performance incentives?
Some of you have added the cheap disclaimer "...but it's okay she's milking it, I'd do the same if I could." Choosing to state the obvious about your own character doesn't justify making a dig at someone else's.
Really, this seems to be an issue of picking on women, something males who are mostly introverts with little relevant experience are drawn to do, especially when for many years they've been getting it either from one overweight, disgruntled spouse or their own badly callused hand. people just shouldn't even discuss women's running at all here, from the pre-middle school level to the geezers limping their was through 200s in a minute thirty. That seems to be the core problem: You think women are here to entertain you in some way, so if they're not setting new records or winning anything and have the nerve to do modeling as part of their contracts, you get to make sweeping character judgments on this basis. (Yeah, people do it to male runners too, but not to nearly the same extent and that's hardly a defense of the overall outlook of the posters here.)