THANK YOU PEARL IZUMI!

i love it. its saying it doesnt matter how talented you are, but if you're gonna do it, then FREAKIN GO FOR IT. after working in a running specialty store and dealing with super-joggers all day, every day, this is so nice. running specialty stores are kept in business by middle-aged housewives and soccer moms spending hundreds of dollars on shoes and apparel and gear to "earn" that 10k or 13.1 sticker they bought beforehand. and if one of them happens to walk-jog an entire marathon, good lord, they will come in just digging and digging for praise.

I love pearl izumis message. you cant be a runner without running balls to the walls when you race. if you are gonna race, then actually race. dont do it just to finish, then its not a race anymore.

huwtf wrote:

It's just an ad. The marketers at Pearl Izumi don't give a crap if someone runs a marathon in two hours or in twelve hours. They are playing to your feelings of superiority to make you buy their product. And it's working.

They offend only the (tiny percentage) 7 hour finisher, the 5 hour runner feels like a champ and can look down their nose at somebody.

Pearl Izumi are bunch of phoneys and the sad thing is that their ads are made for the dolts of letsrun.com

Pearl Izumi, HQ in boulder, is the heart of hobby jogger country. They sponsor NO ELITE runners and make shoes/apparel mostly for the disposable income triathlete crowd.

A bunch of frauds

I do love their Streak II shoes, though. Seriously, I love them.

Looks like the PI adwriters have been reading this board over the years.

I used to feel the same way about 5 hour plus marathoners that didn't really try until I realized that when compared to the average sloth that sits around playing video games or watching TV all day, these people are doing pretty well.

Completing a marathon in under say 6 hours still requires a jog most of the time, which requires effort. No sense in putting these people down I figure.

Still only 1 in 500 in this country completes a marathon in any given year. So I guess PI is trying to appeal to say 1 in 1000+ that runs above average marathons, and of those, the ones that are snobby about "racing", versus those that may have other goals for the event.

I've "raced" all my marathons except for the first one but I don't know how awesome that makes me. Probably still not good enough to wear PI gear.

tam tam tam tam wrote:

Pearl Izumi are bunch of phoneys and the sad thing is that their ads are made for the dolts of letsrun.com

Pearl Izumi, HQ in boulder, is the heart of hobby jogger country. They sponsor NO ELITE runners and make shoes/apparel mostly for the disposable income triathlete crowd.

A bunch of frauds

No elite runners hrm?

This ad is so awesome I want to have it be a billboard during Boston.

umbrella fight wrote:

Thanks but what I really mean to point out is that a lot of people who run 5, 6, 7 hours are going as fast as they can.

No, that's not the case for "a lot" of the 5+ hour marathoners, unless you qualify your statement by saying "it's as fast as they can run given that they really don't train worth a crap and don't actually care how fast they run."

Anyway, I like the Pearl Izumi ad, but I also have nothing against slow runners. I like when people are out being active.

Ditto. Nothing against joggers, it's a hell of a lot better than what they would otherwise be doing. But I do agree that jogging has ruined the marathon as an athletic event. And it's not because it takes anything away from a 2:45 that there were 25,000 people behind me. It's the event itself, the fact that it caters more to the 5-hour runner, the fact that bibs are sold out more than 6 months in advance, and the fact that collective bargaining by Turds In Training means higher race fees and hotel rates for everyone else.

You guys don't get it do you? PI is out to make money. Period. End of Story. They are trying to do this by encouraging the penguins of the running world (where ALL the money is)to think of themselves as 'runners' and above all buy PI product. They want to sell product to THEM and they don't care about you 16min 5K and 2:35 marathon guys. You're just a drop in the ocean of runners.

Seriously, 6 to 7 hours to finish a marathon is not running. Its walking plus. I would put a cut off at 4 1/2 hours. That is being very liberal. At least around 11min/mile, there is some semblance to running with both feet on the air.

My father barely trained in his late 60s and broke 5 hours in his first marathon. He probably ran less than 200 miles all together before the race. I just don't understand why Americans are so fat and slow.

Yeah it's kind of revolting how some folks scarfed this right up. Congratulations, you were in the crosshairs of some cynical marketer and you turned, smiled, waved, said THX!!