Bekele dropped out at 41K, meanwhile in Japan, a 19-year-old girl kept going despite a stress fracture.

A hobbyjogger hero.

Sledge_hammer wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEXMJRMfes

Apparently that girl was running for Ekiden, broke her legs and had to resort to crawling for the rest of the distance. Good for her not giving up and showing true sportsmanship.

Wonder what Bekele would feel watching this.

I wonder if she was running within 1:00 per mile of KB’s marathon pace at any point.

Running on broken legs is stupid.

Only hobbyjoggers want everyone to finish races at all costs...

That is horrifying!!!!!

That’s just wrong, and simply stupid!!!

What was she thinking? Risking a serious, if not career-ending injury just for a moment of glory isn't sportsmanship , but plain stupidity.

So she's not only much slower than KB, but much less intelligent. Thanks for advertising that.

She's not crawling, she just has really bad form.

Spot the hobbyjogger wrote:

Only hobbyjoggers want everyone to finish races at all costs...

Hobby joggers glorifying finishing Marathons at all cost create the pressure and incentive for some high school runners to race October Marathons during XC season. Some say hobby joggers are great for running in general. Do hobby joggers buy most of the gear? Yes. Since there are more Marathon hobby joggers than there are serious runners, hobby joggers have created the hero theory that finishing Marathons is special.

Sledge_hammer wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEXMJRMfes

Apparently that girl was running for Ekiden, broke her legs and had to resort to crawling for the rest of the distance. Good for her not giving up and showing true sportsmanship.

Wonder what Bekele would feel watching this.

She broke both legs? Was she hit by a car?

That's insane. Why would the organizers let her go on like that?

It's a publicity stunt, she broke her legs intentionally.

Both are idiots...

Hopping would have been faster and resulted in less damage to the epidermis.

Stress fractures tend to happen with underweight women who are on inadequate diets often lacking calcium.

Feeling sorry for her. Medics should have stepped in and evacuated her immediately. While not giving up is applaudable, doing something like this is highly risky for her long-term running career.

As for Bekele, if he is constantly dropping out of all those races due to injury, he should have just taken a season or two off like David Rudisha. Bekele has already dropped out of the Dubai Marathon, World XC Championships, and many others.

Update: That girl has fractured her tibial plateau, and is expected to take at least 3 months off running.

Imagine she didn't keep going, and placing the tibia under stress by all that crawling, it could have been better.

If she hadn't finished, her entire team would've been out. And because this was a qualifying race, they also would have been out of the corporate ekiden championships.

800 dude wrote:

If she hadn't finished, her entire team would've been out. And because this was a qualifying race, they also would have been out of the corporate ekiden championships.

Yeah, I take your point. I just don't think it's a wise thing to do. Some may call it team sprint, but I would call it team violence.

But what makes it unwise? It just seems like there's this knee-jerk reaction sometime to avoid any kind of danger. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't call it violence, as it was her choice to continue. And what's the cost? A couple months off is not the end of the world. On the other side of the ledger, this puts her on the map big time. In Japan, this kind of stuff is legendary. The fans care more about displays of guts than they do about fast times. She's also a professional athlete, even though she's young, so she does have a responsibility to put her body on the line to some degree.

At some point you have to ask yourself, what are you saving your body for? Should Kerri Strug not have vaulted in '96 because she was young and she was risking further injury?