m runner wrote:
Michael Cera in 'Juno'
I think he won the district meet or something in the movie, it looked like a casual jog. He wasn't even tired at the end.
I have to disagree with this. I actually really like the depiction of running in that movie. Sure, he looks like he's jogging and not even tired, but it fits the tone of the movie at that particular moment. I thought everything else about him as a runner was really great, funny. Captured distance runners' awkwardness well.
It could have been the original 1966 Batman movie or the tv series, but I think Batman and Robin had to break a world record to run some where once...then on the way back, they had to break their own world record again
Here is a good clip from teh Seinfeld episode:
Alf Shrubb wrote:
Two snippets from the film I mentioned, The Games.
It was supposed to be about 4 runners training for the Olympic marathon.
Charles Aznavour was a chain smoking, French crooner, popular at that time.
A runner I knew that was an extra in the movie told me how they had to run so slow in the scenes on the track, to allow Aznavour (a Zatopec clone!) to overtake them, they were almost falling over each other.
He could ‘run’ for about 30 metres before giving up and having to receive oxygen!
Podgy Ryan O’Neal was supposed to be a 400mt runner in the USA team, when he turns to the US coach and says, “Coach, I want to run the marathon in the Olympics.”
And the coach, instead of telling him to piss-off and not waste his time - takes him seriously!
And I must mention Michael Crawford - his coach grabs him by the shoulders just before the race and tells him - he wants him to run a 2 hour marathon!
You couldn’t make it up - hilarious.
Michael Crawford goes through halfway in something like 59:14 - pretty good for 1970
Gordon Pirie was the ’technical adviser’ on that movie and he said in a newspaper article that Michael Crawford had so much talent, he could have trained him to run a four minute mile in no time.
One scene demanded that Crawford, as part of his build up, should finish first in a big cross-country race.
They chose the Southern Counties (England) and Pirie positioned Crawford about 300mts from the finish.
As the winner came into view, having run just on 9 mile, Pirie waited until he was 400yts from the finish and then set Crawford off, sprinting for the tape.
To the relief of all the film crew - Crawford just managed to reach the tape a couple of metres before, I think it was Tim Johnson.
Having said that, Crawford was the most athletic amongst all the cast and he did do a lot of his own quite risky stunts in his various roles on TV and theatre.
I finally got around to watching Chasing a Dream (yeah I admit I watched the whole thing). The part about losing a best friend who was a talented runner and falling into a depression actually kind of struck a chord for me and was fairly well done, but everyone is correct that it is the worst running movie of all time. Two scenes not mentioned yet: 1. when he felt his road intervals were not hard enough, he set out to find "obstacles." Que montage of weaving around trees and jumping over playground equipment. 2. After running a 4:04 mile, he goes jogging with his dad. When they appear to be in the middle of nowhere, Dad challenges Cam to race home. The scene jumps ahead to their suburban street where Cam barely outkicks his old man. I guess the dad must be in sub-4:10 shape as well.
The mom is really hot.