Fam has yet another awful quote of the day

another take wrote:Hold the phone, you are completely off the mark here.

Well, maybe I am a bit oversensitive. I can tell you honestly that, for some people, it's very hard to take the criticism that is dished out on these boards. I know there's an attitude that "Oh, that's what they signed up for by being fast runners." But they're human. Obviously most of the elites who get trashed make a point of not reading the boards because it's so upsetting. But they can't get away from the comments on their own blog -- that's why I thought the OP was out of line to post (part of) his rant on Fam's blog too.

(again, his post wasn't insulting or off-topic)

Re-reading it, I guess it's far from the most insulting thing posted on Letsrun, so fair enough. My overall reading is that he just doesn't like Fam as a person. Most of his criticisms are about personality traits that have always been evident in Fam. So his constructive criticism essentially amounts to "Be someone else, because I don't like who you are."

Like you said (and like I acknowledged in my post), the message boards are freely available for him to post his rant. But they're equally available for me to respond with my own impressions, which I stand by.

OK, fair enough. Thanks for your answer.

Hold the phone, thanks for a responsible and human response. They're not easy to find.

I actually posted on his blog first. And the only thing which motivated me to post there was seeing so many people cursing their heads off at one or two people who dared disagree with what Fam was saying. It is the same absurd, overwhelming response that anything criticizing Webb or Rupp gets these days. Just because you are criticizing someone, doesn't mean you don't 'support' them. I guess a lot of what you wrote was right on target. It was just venting my own frustrations about how silly some people are.

I can see how you might take from my post that I am saying "be someone else" - that is absolutely the last thing I want anyone to do. Everyone should be themselves. But do you think that's really who Fam is? Do you think he acts like himself in public? To me, it seems like he is putting on this huge act. To me, all of this narcissism, or overly self-involved traits in any person, comes back to some kind of insecurity. In the end, maybe that's all I really was asking for. For him to be more genuine. To not pretend like he was the only one "doing anything for American distance running." My intention has never been to hurt anyone. I love our sport and cheer harder for American distance runners, male and female, than I do for any other professional sports team or athlete. I simply think that some people are taking the wrong thing away from Fam's post, and I don't think it's unjust to the rest of the running community to let it slide.

I can't stand people who run around saying "so and so sucks and here's why" - regardless of what sport they are cheering in. But look at the majority of other American sports and how much hatred there is between fans of different cities. Comparatively, between fans of different runners, the running community is tremendously mild.

I'm going to trust Jack Daniels on this one.

are all you FAM critics robots?

This guy is just trying to get his intensity across to people. He doesn't run for you or me, he runs for himself. And I doubt you ever ran for anyone but yourself either. He's out there to push his limits and hopefully the limits of everyone else around him. You criticize him for taking the lead into a headwind and missing the team....who cares....this is just running for god sakes, he ran his heart out i bet.

He says it himself, the goal is always to run your hardest. That doesn't mean smartest, I know. But god damn, if that doesn't motivate you....then you should go back to weighing out how much pasta you're gonna eat and counting all your miles to the nearest tenth.

I hate seeing boring tactical races even if they're fast. I want to see human beings push themselves to the limits, whatever the result may be. I don't care for the guys who sit and sit and sit on someone and then blast a 53 last lap. That isn't as inspiring as seeing someone try to push themselves right from the start and not over think racing.

Would you take real estate advice from a homeless person?

I never criticized his racing tactics. Gutsy is definitely one way to describe taking the lead from the gun. Showboating is another. What was he thinking going out in 29???? It was just unneccessary. What you see as inspirational, I see as showy and become the next Pre. Watch his interview after the '08 Trials.

I hate seeing boring tactical races too. I just don't see what's motivational about an egomaniac. Nothing about Fam inspires me. I still respect his times and I still root for him. But he just doesn't seem genuine to me.

I don't see how you get from that that I weigh my pasta. I eat everything I can get my hands on, run trails that have never been accurately measured, and don't wear a watch unless I'm running intervals. Kind of irrelevant though, don't you think.

And not all tactical races are boring. It's fun to see five or six different guys in a pack together, five or six guys that you've been following, and try to figure out when they are going to make their big move.

In my opinion, tactical 5k's and 10k's aren't nearly as bad as tactical 1500's. At least the U.S. Just look at the trials.

"I never criticized his racing tactics."

"Showboating is another. What was he thinking going out in 29???? It was just unneccessary. What you see as inspirational, I see as showy"

I wish the 'tod' link stood for Tool Of the Day.

Imagine you're a college runner at your Regional Meet.

Top X number of people go to NCAA Championship meet, the goal for the day is to get to that. Instead, you decide that you're going to hammer for a while and then fall back to 7th, out of contention. Your coach comes over to you to ask what you were thinking and you say "But coach look the top 4 guys in the race ran fast so it's a good day." Yeah, that'll probably make him happy.

This is a forum, we talk about running. On ESPN if a football player makes a stupid play they talk about it there, that is what Fam did, he ran stupid. Call it what you want, but if the objective is to make the WC team and you don't do that when you clearly have the ability to, I call it stupid.

Everyone on this site loves to rip on Galen, or compare people to Pre, but the thing about both of them is that they are (were) there. I'm not going to make it about them because people can't control themselves when those names are brought up, but if you want to make it in the track and field world, you need to be at the big meets.

If you're going to do something like Fam did at USATF, you should be able to back it up. At the 72 games Pre didn't medal, but he proved that he was in the same class as the top runners in the world. All Fam showed the other day is that he either didn't want to go to WC or that he thinks he is a hell of a lot better than he is.

i wish wrote:

"I never criticized his racing tactics."

"Showboating is another. What was he thinking going out in 29???? It was just unneccessary. What you see as inspirational, I see as showy"

I wish the 'tod' link stood for Tool Of the Day.

Good one. Incredibly original.

I still don't see how i criticized his racing tactics. By tactics I meant the fact that he took the lead. Going out in 29 is just plain stupid. Granted, the adrenaline rush, okay, but it proves my point. He needed to lead from the gun for show. It wasn't part of the 'tactic' of making sure the pace wasn't slow. He could have taken over at 600 if he felt the need to keep things on the brink of Bekele's WR.

I agree with the OP's and others criticism of Fam's quote. It's BS. I hate people that try to rationalize the normal, ego driven or even irrational things they do in life and turn them into some selfless acts of beauty or art. Fam pushed the pace, the thought he could burn the others out, he thought he could kick their asses this way, and......... he fell flat on his face. End of story. Nothing wrong with that, I give him credit for trying hard, but Fam, for crissakes stop the nonsense in describing what happened. If you REALLY wanted to sacrifice for the others, ask them what pace they wanted and run it. I can guarantee you that they would not have asked for a 29 200 and 60 400. And if you really wanted to help German get the AJR, then don't suddenly sprint back to the front of the pack after dropping back and then SLOW the pace way down. That erratic running almost probably cost him the record.

He went out too hard, and had a bad day in the end. The rest is BS.

Oh and that thing about pushing German to the AJR. German even split the entire race, I don't really think that Fam sprinting at the front had as much to with German just running SMART. If German had sat on Fam the whole race then Fam could say that he helped pace German to the record, but much the same as when Webb broke the HS mile record, he ran his own race and kept himself out of the surges at the front. He set the record in spite of Fam leading that race, not because of it.

There is a thin line between healthy self-reflection/introspection and navel gazing/narcissism and I think Fam might cross the line sometimes. Thinking of one's life as a movie or a drama, with a plot and you the main character, rather than as a series of lightly-related episodes, I think can be a bit psychologically unhealthy.

I think that what hampers runners of all levels is trying to figure out what their orientation to the sport is, that is, why they run and compete. I would argue that the best runners approach the sport in a "goal free" way - that is they focus on getting the process of training right and then let the races take care of themselves as just a part of the larger process, not as an end in itself. People who focus too much on goals are setting themselves up for a disappointment because the failure of a goal will cause them despair, but the achievement of a goal creates a very short-lived happiness, which is confusing to people who have had goal-oriented living hammered into them for so long. So they undergo a constant process of self-examination rather than just recognizing that the problem is just not being aware of the psychology of happiness and contentment.

Yanqui wrote:

Fam lives and trains in Knoxville again.

I just think it's a bit presumptuous for him to imply that his tactics had something to do with the times and standards and junior record in the race. It was actually a generally slow 5000. I mean, Tegenkamp and Solinsky have both run considerably faster. And it was no secret Fernandez was capable of his record.

Knoxville is another sh*t hole that Fam has decided to train in. Let's see there's Eugune, Flagstaff ( where he has spent time training ), Portland, Boulder, Mammoth Lakes, hummm I'll train in Knoxville where the guns are a plenty and the Wiskey is fresh.

My theory is johnny langenwanker is FAM.

If you look at the bottom of this page, most likely you will get an ad for Run Like Hell.

Why is Fam's movie (ad at the bottom of the page) rated PG-13?

bcos he saids 'penis' in it