MSNBC article about "running" a marathon...funny

We have to remember this chick and check to see how bad she fails when Ironman Canada goes off. I can't wait to see this disaster. I think she quits 70 into the bike.

Remember Her in a few months wrote:

We have to remember this chick and check to see how bad she fails when Ironman Canada goes off. I can't wait to see this disaster. I think she quits 70 into the bike.

We just all need to pray that she gets some training in between now and then.

I'm middle aged and let myself get terribly out of shape after the c-section births of my 7 & 9 year olds. I work full-time; now I don't know this woman's history but if she is proud of what she did we should be too.

I recently walked a 20 mile walk for hunger, piece of cake. Last weekend I walked 40 miles over 2 days for cancer funding. I'm really proud of what I did and feel it was a huge physical accomplishment that I'm still suffering from 3 days later! But I finished and I think that is all she is saying.

She doesn't seem to be comparing herself to serious, experienced runners; she just met her goal and is proud.

Advice to her is great, criticism is not.

Tell it to Oprah, honey.

I agree.

She made mistakes and gave bad advice. However this was a human interest story, period. Get over it, congratulate her on her accomplishment and congratulate each other on your physical fitness, time to train (I bet 45yearoldmommy doesn't have much time.

You all sound awesome as far as athletes go but your "jealousy or mean spiritedness" of this is painful to read.

You weren't trying to complete a marathon on ridiculously low training, nor are you planning on tackling an IRONMAN on ridiculously low training.

I don't see you advising the continuous use of painkillers to finish any big physical accomplishment.

I can see where advice can quickly turn into criticism.

Are you really Maury? Regardless, what does tell it to Oprah mean?

Agree but she still did something, we don't know her background.

I trained for my walks and made sure I did 20 miles a few times prior to the actual date (by the way I made about the same time she did while walking for the 26 mile).

Still, my point is this is what the media likes and instead of picking on the woman keep giving her advice, don't mock her like some on the board. Advice always helps.

In fact, I have had the worst stomach cramps since my 40 mile walk. I'm short and think I overextened my stride for most of the walk, plus it was at least 50% up-hill. Any advice on how to avoid the stomach discomfort in the future?

45 year old mommy you are not getting why many of us are critizing her on what she is trying to accomplish. She is trying to indertake an event (Ironman) and is training well under what is required for this event then is writing about how great her training is going and how she is going to accomplish this goal. Unfortunately on the current training schedule she is going to fail miserably.

In addition, as runners who train seriously and understand our sport is already obscure dont need the masses thinking 6:40 marathons is an accomplishment since its not!

I congradulate her. She did a fairly good job, and am sure that if she was ever to run that same marathon again she would take off at least 30 minutes from her time.

-dirk

Look, we all understand that she did something and 6:39 isn't THAT bad (well yeah it is, but I'm giving people the benefit of the doubt here). I agree with ???, it does piss you off because..........IT WAS ON MSNBC.COM! If a 6:39 gets national recognition (and yes I know I'll be accused of being jealous or lacking something in my life) but seriously, when I read that I think: "That runner is the serious runners' representative in national news?"

Nevermind.

This article reminds me why I am border line anti-social.

"Great article, except for a glaring grammatical error. In the paragraph which begins "It did give Jeff and I plenty of time to talk," the use of "I" is incorrect. It should be "Jeff and me."

That's funny. I wouldn't be surprised if a grammar-Nazi from letsrun sent her that.

I think I'm not on my own by being torn about this stuff. I have absolutely no problem with either her being slow or having her slow self chronicled in an article on MSNBC. However, I think its just yet another reminder of where this sport is.

The average person has a completely inflated view of how fast they are. Add a lack of common knowledge about track, etc and you get people thinking that they've run 4 minutes for a mile because they ran 4 laps on a 1/8 mile indoor track and other ignorant, but not malicious bs. I remember when Geb set a 5k wr a while back, I thought it would be an excellent thing to bring up in a class I was teaching. I relayed that that was like doing almost 4 minute miles for a 3 miles. There was a huge passive silence. One of my students then said "Don't people run 4 minute miles all the time?" I was stunned.

Conversely, in our increasingly sedentary society doing any sort of physical exertion for over an hour is met with some sort of awe as if you tempted death itself. Talk about running a marathon and the average individual is impressed simply with the distance of it and the amount of time that you'd have to run to cover that distance. Speed doesn't compute.

I think the main problem with where road racing is right now is that there is a huge gulf between those who view it as their sport of choice (talent aside) and those who are doing it because it's an event. Unfortunately, the latter is prevailing and gaining even more ground every day. As a result, your average road race today is either a 5k run/WALK that's 'fun' to participate in or a marathon that serves as some sort of rite of passage regardless of whether you trained, did well, etc. The point in both is to finish. Again, speed has nothing to do with anything.

So, while I don't have a problem w/ her "doing" a marathon, or even writing about it, I don't really embrace anything that makes running less a sport and more an event.

I played some baseball in high school, but I sucked. Those are the objective facts. I wasn't a winner for showing up. What I was doing was in fact quite different from what Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, etc were doing. I was, in fact, a poor baseball player. This woman currently sucks as a distance "athlete". Not railing on her, she just does. However, maybe with some real work (15 miles a freakin' week?), she could write about what it's like to actually run and compete.

Macker that was a well written response and that is exactly my stance on this issue too! Well said.

The thing that pisses me off is that journalists should have a sense of newsworthiness. If she thinks chronicling her pathetict attempts at being a distance runner are worth any readers'/viewers' time, she is sadly mistaken.

I'd rather read about the winning Ethiopian or another runner who had an interesting story, maybe someone who did train effectively and how he/she did it.

This was like having to read a story about a chef who burns toast.

Guys, if you stress about this too much, you will end up in conseling. Trust me, this stuff will send you too depression. I have since blocked it out and went on with my own training and racing knowing full well that no matter how slow I race or how many 5k's I Gallowalk I'll never make MSNBC.

Good post. To follow up on the baseball analogy, although you weren't a "winner" and shouldn't pretend that you were, it was a good thing and not something to look down upon that you tried a sport that you weren't the best in. Likewise, there's no reason to look down on someone for trying out a marathon that anyone can enter.

A college baseball player could very well say- I hate guys like Macker who waste space on our high school teams, they shouldn't play at all if they're not going to devote themselves entirely to baseball. It's a stupid attitude, but one that a lot of us seem to have toward people who are "trying running".

But just like I don't think that anyone needs to be glorifying Macker for sucking at baseball; I don't think that anyone needs be glorifying a 6 hour marathoner whose only problem is laziness. As far as human interest stories go, why isn't training hard to run your best of interest?

Olympic medalists aren't the only people who run as best as they can. I think just about everyone here admires Ed Whitlock. Another person I admire is Dick Hoyt, who pushed his disabled son in a wheelchair in many Boston marathons, as well as Ironman triathlons. Accoring to Boston.com, their best marathon time is 2:40. To me, that's exactly what a "human interest running story" should be about- a normal person who really made his running count for something in another person's life- not a normal person who got their hands out of the cheetos bag and their ass off the couch and stumbled through a marathon.

I just got my own blog. This story is one of the things I plan to bitch about over there.