Are we witnessing the death of the marathon?

what about the canadians EH?

No, not eloquence.How about a little correlation between what he just did (run a smokingly fast major marathon and and win a buttload of cash) and his demeanor? He didn't seem even a little bit happy. Instead, he seemed a bit confused as to why the mzungu was asking him questions about what he just did. For contrast, see Kebede's interview from the 2012 Chicago Marathon. http://www.diretube.com/nbc-9/a-must-watch-interview-with-tsegaye-kebede-chicago-marathon-winer-video_953a7eb25.htmlGuy doesn't speak much English, but the happiness comes through loud and clear.

Damnit Jim wrote:

Do you expect eloquence and brilliant prose from a kenyan farmer who probably recently learned what little english he knows and just ran a course shattering marathon?

I don't know, he just looked tired, but i think that would be understandable after just blitzing a 2:03.

I think it's no different than American Basketball. We've got guys that don't make the NBA and go all over the world to play basketball and make an OK living. No different than no name Africans coming here to do the same thing, earn a living.

The biggest difference I see is that a 50k payday in Africa is monstrous, life changing. Here, why would you run and be a sub elite or elite after college when you can make more with a real job... seams like a waste of time to see how fast you can run up till you're 30 years and lose 10 years of income trying to make an Olympic team every 4 years.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if American running had the same salary implications that they have for east Africans, you'd probably see a lot more guys pressing it after college, which pushes the elite to get better, which pushes the envelope on records... I'd say it's a numbers game more than anything.

I just don't think it's worth it. Even a remote shot at an Olympic squad isn't monetarily worth it for these guys. I'm pretty sure my base salary is more than 95% of pro-runners. So why would I want to be a poor guy on food stamps chasing a 13:20 5k or a 2:14 marathon when it gets me no where.

It's nice to hold on to the dream, but reality has to set in at some point. No different than a minor league ball player who isn't going to make it to the bigs... except our bigs is one race every 4 years and 3 guys make it.

yawn...here come the clones wrote:

Countless no-name cookie-cutter africans running sub-2:05. At every marathon a new nameless clone comes out of the woodwork and wins it. At some point nobody will give a shit anymore about the marathon at the elite level.

What are you talking about?these guys are superstars and house hold names. NTV, KTN, the Nation and the Standard all regularly turn up to film their workouts, interview them at their houses. They are recognised when walking down the street, local politicians try to allign themselves with them and host welcome home parties, there are photos of them winning races in local ahops, hairdressers, cafes.

Marathon is huge, the media interest has never been higher and the athletes are mega rich!

O wait - you meant dying in the US (and therefore the world???)

giddy wrote:

I just don't think it's worth it. Even a remote shot at an Olympic squad isn't monetarily worth it for these guys. I'm pretty sure my base salary is more than 95% of pro-runners. So why would I want to be a poor guy on food stamps chasing a 13:20 5k or a 2:14 marathon when it gets me no where.

Why is anybody an artist?

Finally A sensible post by Giddy above in the midst of all kinds of crazy stuff from bitter American fans accusing Kimetto of not being happy, not being eloquent or even doping.

The marathon will survive just fine due almost completely to the charity runners, the hobby joggers, and the money they bring to the city. The top runners are almost irrelevant and they will become less so in the future. Marathons will become even more participatory parade-like events that raise money and they will get publicity for the size of the event, not the athletic performances of the runners.

The majority of people could care less about runners or running. Just check the Neilson ratings to see that there is ZERO interest in watching any running event other than the Olympics on TV. Actually, and embarrassingly, the mostly empty stands for the World champs in Moscow speak volumes. Remember the story of the long jumper? It is the one about the long jumper who attempted to encourage the crowd in the Luzhniki Stadium to clap, only for a lone voice to bellow back: "You'll be lucky, there's no-one here".

Unfortunately, those who have an extreme focus on running develop a kind of narcissistic delusion that what they are doing is important. How could something that requires so much energy and time NOT be important? That’s the delusion. No one besides yourself actually cares….but you don’t notice.

Jeff Wigand wrote:

Why is anybody an artist?

So they don't have to work. Duh.

Racist as f*** cuz. No name... because YOU'VE never heard of him. He's never heard of you either dude. Cookie-cutter... yeah, black people are like Asians. All look the same hey. Gets confusing. Sure they SAY they're from any of a dozen countries but they're just from Blackistan if you ask me.

Nameless clones, all of them.

Kicking you ass, though. And they ain't even mad.

So why YOU so mad?

giddy wrote:

Jeff Wigand wrote:

Why is anybody an artist?

So they don't have to work. Duh.

Bet you're the life of the party.

How's that CD collection looking?

wut wrote:

Racist as f*** cuz. No name... because YOU'VE never heard of him. He's never heard of you either dude. Cookie-cutter... yeah, black people are like Asians. All look the same hey. Gets confusing. Sure they SAY they're from any of a dozen countries but they're just from Blackistan if you ask me.

Nameless clones, all of them.

Kicking you ass, though. And they ain't even mad.

So why YOU so mad?

POTD

And extra points for saying it in fluent ghetto.......

Well most of them do it because they can't hold a real job....

Jeff Wigand wrote:

giddy wrote:

I just don't think it's worth it. Even a remote shot at an Olympic squad isn't monetarily worth it for these guys. I'm pretty sure my base salary is more than 95% of pro-runners. So why would I want to be a poor guy on food stamps chasing a 13:20 5k or a 2:14 marathon when it gets me no where.

Why is anybody an artist?

How's your blog? Still waiting for it to cover the money your parents subsidize you? Take a moment or two away from Instagram, loosen the skinny jeans, and take a joke.

asdfaafdafasd wrote:

Well most of them do it because they can't hold a real job....

What's your favorite work of art?

I'm far from bitte.r and I didn't accuse him of not being happy, just seeming that way. I want more guys like KImetto to make it. Guy has a great story, and he's obviously a great runner. But, his interview was a disaster.

Enrico Chiesa wrote:

Finally A sensible post by Giddy above in the midst of all kinds of crazy stuff from bitter American fans accusing Kimetto of not being happy, not being eloquent or even doping.

I get it, and your point is well taken.

I'm all for people following their passions, but art and running isn't an applicable comparison. If the only similarity is that neither are paid well and people still do it, then why not add working at McDonald's if that's your passion, or any job for that matter.

Art isn't objectively measurable by your peers, unless it's by the dollar value that your pieces go for, to which most people would agree that your name means more than the work you put out. There's tons of artists, who given the right exposure, would be more successful. That goes for actors, musicians, and a few other craft workers as well. And how many career ending injuries does a master sculpture have to worry about, potentially ruining his funding for the year.

Can't you see how that's completely the opposite of running? Running is 100% objectively measured. There's a race, you run it, your place is your place and your time is your time. That's it. So whats your motivation to do it, to see how fast you can get? The sacrifice for these guys is to negatively lopsided.

I'm not suggesting people don't go for it, I'm simply pointing out that there isn't enough motivation to boost the number of people going for it, and thus there isn't enough competition to keep us moving forward at the same pace (pun intended) as the East Africans, who have a TON of motivation, simply because 20k in Kenya goes so much further.

Rojo and Wejo keep blabbing about how much money you win for a marathon, or the 100k for the Boston trio of events. So, if you win a Major or this one set of races, you can maybe earn what a computer programmer in New York makes? Basically, if your one of maybe 15 guys in the world, you're going to struggle.

Imagine if you had a league of running where guys minimum salary was 150k... think of how many more people would still be at trying to make it, and how much more motivation there would be for elites to stay on top.

The better question would be, Why be a professional runner? It sure isn't the stability.

I love a parade wrote:

The marathon will survive just fine due almost completely to the charity runners, the hobby joggers, and the money they bring to the city. The top runners are almost irrelevant and they will become less so in the future. Marathons will become even more participatory parade-like events that raise money and they will get publicity for the size of the event, not the athletic performances of the runners.

The majority of people could care less about runners or running. .....

I agree with what you say for the most part, but I do wonder about the viability of the big marathons if the race aspect were removed completely. It may seem at times that the elite racing is an afterthought, but I believe it is the all-important core around which all the other side dramas are built. Without the race, all you have is tens of thousands of people jogging through the city. Think of, say, the Boston Marathon minus the elite race. What would the coverage look like? What would the news stories talk about? It may be that many people watching the race or even participating in it couldn't tell you anything specific about the winners, other than that they were African (usually), but the mere fact that the race was contested on an elite level seems to provide an essential starting point to the excitement of the big marathons.

Speaking of Boston, some people may not realize that they were one of the last big races to start awarding prize money. They thought their event was huge enough that they didn't have to offer money to professionals; prestige alone should bring them there. However, seemingly it didn't work out that way:

"But as Boston's field and the number of quality runners dwindled in 1985 (to 5,900, down 22 percent from 1982), America`s most famous race came under siege. The elite of the running world said tradition is nice, but it doesn`t fit in the wallet. The BAA argued the course was excellent, saying the stage was more important than the players.

``That was like saying it`s not Larry Bird, but the parquet floor at Boston Garden that the fans come to see,`` said 1983 Fort Lauderdale Heart Run and Boston Marathon winner Greg Meyer, who refused to run Boston last year even though he lives 15 minutes away.

Trapped between tradition and transition, race organizers responded to those forces to restore the race`s reputation as the world`s premier marathon. Offering prize money was a huge stride forward."

Attitudes may have changed since 1986, but I like to think that it still remains true that an elite race will not remain an elite race unless elite racing takes place.

You misunderstand almost everything that I wrote, because you are determined to show that I am wrong because I don't enjoy today's competitive environment as much as days gone by.

I will say this: the runner's of the 1960's and 1970's and 1980's doped ... not all of them, but many of them. The guys from that era know this and many have admitted this. I know this. They just didn't have EPO, they had almost every other drug. Inhalers, steroids, corticoids, amphetamines, blood packing. All of these allowed a big improvement for the runners who used them, but EPO made more of an improvement than all of those put together.

It brought the 10k record down by almost 55 seconds and the 5k record down by 31 seconds. 4:00 for the marathon (just for EPO) is a very reasonable estimate based on all the data we have to compare and 50 years of comparing it.

If you want to look at drug fueled records, look at the throws. All except the new ones date back to the 1980s, many by a long ways.

Your assertion that the men's middle and long distance records set in the 1990s were all EPO driven would carry more weight if those records were unapproachable under today's anti-doping restrictions (as they are for women's throws and Chinese records), but the men's records have either been broken or have come within striking distance of being broken since the institution of EPO testing, with the only exception being the non-championship men's 3000m.

What sort of operation must be in place that runners from different countries in different training camps are all in on a subsurface drug machine that's subverting the most stringent anti-doping measures ever used all while everyone is keeping their mouths shut? If American hero Lance couldn't get away with it, how could Africans with far fewer resources and power do it and do it better than he ever could?