Here is her latest article taking on the cheaters.
There has to be a quote of the day in there somewhere.
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Women running on empty
Ernest marathoners are athletes? Please
Nov. 12, 2005. 01:00 AM
ROSIE DIMANNO
Pardon my cackle.
Not to be mistaken with hackle, which is what a lot of other middle-aged women got up the last time I wrote about the zealotry of recreational marathon runners who seem to believe, if they just keep pounding the pavement, and fancying themselves hard-core athletes, they'll never grow old and never die.
This, even though Marathon Running For Idiots is a killer and, with distressing frequency, lethal also for those who make a New Age religion of it. There was another sad casualty at the Toronto Marathon this year. And it should not be forgotten that the cult of this 42K ordeal arose from the legendary expiry of Pheidippides, who hotfooted it from Marathon to Athens to deliver news of victory over Persia. Then promptly keeled over.
The historian Herodotus, who recounted that story for posterity — even though it may be merely myth — surely never envisioned the day when thousands upon thousands of marathoners would indulge in public spectacles requiring the closing of arterial roads and the investiture of medals for everyone who completes the course, regardless of time and finishing order.
The conceit is that while everyone can do it if they train and try — thus the emergence of terribly earnest running clubs that prey on the insecurities of primarily middle-age ladies — it is also a profoundly me-applauding accomplishment, worthy of certificates and honours and group hugs. They're so special.
Now — this is where the cackling comes in — it appears that setting the bar even that low, just finishing the damn thing, was insufficient "democratization'' of what began as a torturous elite endeavour. In a complete reversal of all that defines sports, we now get cheating as a purportedly acceptable tactic on the road to crossing the tape and feeling self-embracingly good about oneself.
Dr. Jean Marmoreo, founder of Toronto-based JeansMarines — a running group of women who train together for the annual U.S. Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. — has admitted to facilitating things so some of her slower acolytes could complete the race last week. Marmoreo encouraged a rump of runners, and runner-walkers, and walkers — because just putting one foot in front of the other is now apparently a sport and I'm the Princess of Wales — to digress from the route at the 16-kilometre mark, rejoining it at the 22-km mark. Cutting across The Mall lopped a good chunk off the course and helped ensure that the pussies a) reached the 14th St. Bridge within five hours of the start, as mandated to stay in the race, and b) finished the whole thing in less than the seven-hour cutoff.
How startling it must have been to these ersatz marathoners that suddenly there were precise rules involved and that sport, inherently demanding, is not about accommodating the lowest common denominator and meaningless ribbons to everybody; that there is, despite our society's attempts to discourage the reality, a difference between winning and losing, between success and failure.
There were reports yesterday that race organizers may not welcome JeansMarines back next year, for violating the rules and damaging the integrity of the sport. Bounced from Washington — that's quite an achievement for these Canadian women. Not even our oft-provocative ambassador to D.C. has suffered such an ignominy.
At first, Marmoreo seemed not to have entirely grasped the wrongness of her actions. While asking those who did not complete the entire course to return their medals, Marmoreo also obfuscated and rationalized mightily in an email sent to all JeansMarines members, writing that what she did had been "perceived as cheating.''
Perhaps this posture is to be expected of people who perceive themselves as athletes. I cover athletes as part of my living. And you, marathon ladies, are not athletes. Anymore than I, who love to shoot pool, am Minnesota Fats.
Athletes do cheat, of course. Mostly they do it by taking proscribed performance-enhancing drugs. But they don't cheat by running diagonally from first base to third base or hitching a ride — as Rosie Ruiz famously did — in the Boston Marathon.
It's telling that Marmoreo puts the emphasis on achieving dreams — as if this would ameliorate the fraud, although the group did announce several reform initiatives yesterday.
Dreams shmeams. Running as some kind of New Age therapy for the middle-aged-and-counting is delusional. It doesn't make you a finer person, although it can make you a much more tiresome person.
I wouldn't make such a big deal out of the cheating if they didn't make such a big deal out of the running.
I've had it up to here with the touchy-feely ethos, the otherworldly spirituality, which has devolved to running as a vehicle for female empowerment. Oh, I know all about the attendant virtues of physical challenges to self, although my instinct when confronted with nirvana-tinged testimonials from Baby Boomers Who Run is to conclude that they've got too much time on their hands and worship at the altar of their glorious selves.
Spending time in the company of lay marathoners — which is the price I pay for having two running fiends as close friends who are all the time yammering about it — has rendered me a reluctant witness to this particular affliction/addiction. These same two women, not content with rising at 6 a.m. to burst all endorphin-primed on the darkened autumn streets of Toronto, are now forking over good money to attend an elite theory-of-running class in the evening.
They don't do anything in half-measure; that's their nature. One admitted to getting dreadfully sick during a recent marathon, retching repeatedly, but gallantly struggling on to finish the course. This strikes me as hugely unwise for any 50-year-old and not worth the candle. But it would never have crossed her mind to take a shortcut.
I think both these smashing dames are in thrall to a post-feminist cult of running, a Stepford Marathon delirium that lures with the unattainable — everlasting youth and beauty, the reversal of time, bodies that will never erode. One, who has most recently become absorbed with the idea of doing a triathlon, is definitely in need of an intervention, just like they do for coke addicts.
Thing is, I'd have to catch her first.
And Rosie don't run.