hey, hey Amby Burfoot

Amby Burfoot wrote:

To those who have mentioned my 1992 RW mag article, "White Men Can't Run," thanks for remembering it. I was wrong in 1992, but you might want to check the Beijing 2008 men's running results. Then answer this question: Which way is the pendulum swinging?

Many people were understandably mystified at your suggestion that Ryan Hall, a 2:06 marathoner and the epitome of confidence, would stand at the start line of Boston doubting that he measured up to his competitors. The reference to your '92 article was, as an initial matter, intended to give the background on your publicly dug-in position and your consequent insistence that everyone must share your opinion. In your comments on

Ryan Hall, you have taken this insistence to the point of absurdity.

Apart from that issue, your question about Beijing demonstrates that you still don't understand that you have to provide a scientifically meaningful basis for your "genetic" argument about "inequality" in order for that argument to have any validity. So Merritt edged out Wariner. So what? So Ramzi, for example, won gold. Do you have a scientific argument that runners from Morocco have a "genetic" characteristic affecting running ability that "European" runners do not share? I'll answer it for you, no.

One more thing about the "pendulum": the British, for example, aren't producing runners anywhere near the quality of Coe, Ovett and Cram. And I'm pretty sure that an alteration in the British "genome" isn't the cause.

Gosh you guys here can be so clever. I'm on a bigger computer now and I see that earlier, on my laptop, I typed an "m" where I should have had an "n." Is that the big deal? Truth is, the type on that screen is way too small and my eyes are way too bad to be able to tell the difference.

Is that it? Someone is really bored enough that actually took time to write about it? Or am I obtuse enough that there's something else?

HRE wrote:

Or am I obtuse enough that there's something else?

Yes, absolutely!

Hey, old fart, there's a really neat way to increase font size in your browser: ctrl & +

Or, you could just live with the occasional typo. But I'm glad you hang on my every word.

It's NOT a typo! You must not know what a typo is to claim that's what it is. You injected wrong and extra letters that are not adjacent to each other on the keyboard. Are you drunk?

Tell you what, I'll stop correcting your errors when you start correcting them. That's my best offer.

"M" and "N" are next to each other on the keyboard. They look a lot alike. There's an extra "t" which I finally managed to see because I'm bewidered as to why this matters so much to you that I took off my glasses, leaned next to the screen and managed to see it. From a normal distance with my glasses on, which I need to wear in order to see from any distance other than very close, the word looks perfectly normal.

No, I'm not drunk. I don't see very well. I already explained that. Perhaps you're drunk and can't understand that? I have no plans for regularly taking off my glasses and getting to within 3-4 inches of the screen every time I write something.

Again, thanks for being so interested in what I write and as I've answered your question please answer mine about why those two incorrect letters bother you so much.

HRE you have every right to stick up to someone calling you out but can we please get back on topic in this thread.

We have Amby Burfoot a legend and one of the most intelligent guys in the running community here talking about the upcoming boston marathon and you want to get off track here about grammar. I think they are about 100+ other thread that deal with grammar issues so please lets not make let a good thread go to waste.

Amby: It was great meeting you after the plunge this year at kelleys pace.

The last 6 posts= Letsrun ping-pong with no winner.

Wait...are you saying "m" and "n" are next to each other on the keyboard?

Well...this explains a lot of my problems.

If Mark Harris had confused the "m" with the "n" in "Bang The Drum Slowly," his stunning last line would have been:

"Fron here om im, I rag mobody"

There were races where Merritt edged out Wariner but the Olympic Final was not one of them. Merritt beat Wariner by almost a second, I believe.

I agree with you completely. It is actually the frustration with people who take some stupid thing and go off topic with it that prompted me to get into this exchange. I'm done with that part of the thread. I'll have typos in future posts. Lots of otthers do too.

To the original topic, I'm not really sure what Amby's point was. In many ways, I recall that his situation was similar to that of today's US marathon runners. By 1968 the Boston Marathon had become as international a race as any non-Olympic marathon could be. That was the main reason we all drained our savings accounts to come and run it. The year before a Kiwi, Dave MacKenzie, had taken the race from a collection of Japanese marathoners who worked as a team and came first.

No American had won the in the previous ten years and only one had won it since World War II. When Amby won it was news enough that the Johnstown (Pa.)Tribune Democrat, my hometown newspaper which NEVER carried stories about track, road racing, cross country (other than really brief stories about local high school meets) actually carried a story, a very short one, about the race. I think it might have been the first time I ever heard of marathons and Amby (maybe he will comment here) must have known that he was going where no American had gone before, at least in a long time.

When Amby won that race there was a renaissance (does that need capitalized, do any of the guys who can spell "confrontation" know?) going on in US distance running. There's one going on now though much less advanced than the one in the 60s (no apostrophe needed guys?) was. Perhaps Ryan faces a challenge even steeper than Amby's was, but there are simlilarities. And that's exactly the reason why it will be even bigger news than it was when Amby won and why I think it's better for US distance running for him to run in Boston than in London or Rotterdam.

I have proofread this post and any misspellings are the result of poor eyesight or a short attention span.

Honestly, I don't Amby's original point was anything other than there are a number of factors that would combine to make the odds against Hall's winning in Boston highly unlikely. But, you know, those kind of odds can be overcome, and he doesn't say they won't be.

Many of us are excited because we finally think an American, Hall, CAN win. But it WOULD an upset. I mean, it's not like he's the favorite.

There seems to be an aspect in racing that does not get talked about a lot. And that is decision making during a race.

I can't tell you how many times I have interviewed/conversed with/read about/heard of an athlete who in hindsight suggests that 'at mile X, I decided to wait and that was a big mistake', or 'I went out too fast'.

So if your big day comes only once-per-so many months or years and especially if you are a marathon runner, your big day, where everything is perfect, you get out of bed on the right side, breakfast timing was perfect, all superstitions were followed to a T, no panic, arriving at the start was perfection - this is the right day and there are no injuries, niggles or concerns no colds, sniffles or added pounds. SO the runner goes out too slow....or gets in a pack and waits, too long...

This is one aspect that people talk about in retrospect, but is never really broached too much before hand - only a little.

At the Olympics in Beijing, if we want to talk about racing, mano-a-mano, Wanjiru just put his head down at one point late in the race and went. He sat near the lead for over twenty miles. What good would he have done if he looked at his watch the whole way? He was in position and when it was right to go, he just burried the field and ran arguably the best ever race some say better than the two fastest times Haile owns.

I can also bet that Ndereba kicked herself for thinking that Dita was going to come back to her and so Catherine the Great waited. Catherine could have gone with her, in retrospect.

In an interview Catherine said she never saw Dita up ahead, which is preposterous, as the front shots of Constantina showed the field behind her. What did she think the vans full of camera people were?

She was being smart with her answer and maybe polite. She thought Constantina surged off too soon.

Judgement is a toughie!

I think Ryan also thought that he was in a better spot than he really was for some time, before he realized it was all over.

I could be wrong. How many of you can remember a race, where you thought damn, if only I...

HRE wrote:

I'm bewidered

That's obvious.

wow.. I got something in common with Amby and Bill Clinton.

Born on 8/19/46.

Great to see you here Amby.