She was once a runner

read this wrote:

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2006/09/ask-about-her-period.html

This link, I suspect, was provided to us by someone who can see into the future or knew the content of tonight's blog ahead of time.

I keep having the idea that the blog is a lyric by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins - just replace "she's an easy lover" with "she was once a runner." Other than that, I've enjoyed reading it and wonder where "she" will end up when all is said and done.

So when female runners get EDs, are overtrained/run badly, are exploited economically, etc. etc. it's all the fault of the system and we're supposed to excuse all her behavior because she's depressed and obsessive. We're supposed to sympathize with her because we understand that she's revealing all the ways that the corporate system of D1 running destroys women. But then when she meets a football player who is the similar victim of the sports system, instead of sympathizing or understanding the ways he might be exploited and treated only as money to his team, she calls him a dumb jock. Why is the system bad when she falls victim to it (and has no responsibility for her own actions) but a football player who is a victim of the same system is stupid? Calling him dumb for having to leave school once he is injured is the same as blaming women for having EDs.

As far as everything else, I don't understand why people will endlessly excuse bad behavior of others as long as they can justify it as "mental illness" or whatever. Obviously, this girl has issues, but being able to see how and why those issues exist doesn't somehow magically make her a decent person or make her judgments of others any less harsh. It's like the moment people can diagnose some issue with someone they cease to be responsible for their own actions. I think the narrator is mostly an appalling person - I also think that there are clear issues with NCAA D1 sports and with women's running. One does not cancel out the other, but I think the writer is an absolutely toxic person. There have been many other female runners who have spoken insightfully and eloquently about these issues - it's a little sad that people are excusing all kinds of terribleness about this author because her experiences validate their own.

i'm thinking florida state

girl runner wrote:

It's like the moment people can diagnose some issue with someone they cease to be responsible for their own actions. I think the narrator is mostly an appalling person

This is quite an ironic post.

I didn't read her interaction with the football player as toxic at all. I thought that she sympathized with him--she now understands why her teammates coo over football players (she finds him attractive?), she wants to shake his hand, she even tells him that she's sorry, and I read her compassion as genuine. "This was as close as I'd ever get" doesn't mean that he IS a dumb jock; her comment instead seems to imply that the unsympathetic dumb jock stereotypes don't actually exist in reality. She connects much more with the football player and has more genuine interactions with him than she does with her male (and female) teammates.

As far as everything else, I think that the narrator's voice might change as the story progresses. At this point in the story, she is still very much caught up in the black hole of no perspective that is D1 running. Her attitude at this point in the narrative is not necessarily the attitude that she has at this point in her life, 10 years out--or maybe even the attitude that she will have once she finishes writing her story. I'm willing to bet that all the other female runners who can speak insightfully and eloquently are pretty far out from their eating disorders and competitive days. (I believe Patti Dillon didn't start speaking about her experiences until years after). And I'm not so sure that the narrator has done terrible things. We all judge people and hold resentments, the difference is that we usually don't lay out the dark things we think for everyone else to see. And hey, didn't you say something about making harsh judgements of people? I think that we should reserve judgement until the story is through.

Actually, scratch most of my last paragraph. The narrator's attitude is fine just as it is. If we don't want to point fingers, we should gain a little sympathy for her coaches and parents, who may not realize how much their attempts at manipulation and comments about the narrator's weight are hurting her, not helping her. There was an interesting line in the Ask Her About Her Period article--"[Alex DeVinny's coach] is so troubled by her death that he has since quit."

Although I don't know if this is the right outlook either. Maybe the best part about the blog is that we can draw whatever truth we want from it.

Ironic indeed. The poster criticizes the blogger's judgemental attitude and then rails against the writer (using words like "terrible" and "apalling person") ...then goes on a long diatribe about using mental illness as an excuse for poor behavior.

The tone of the blog reminds me of the tone of the book "Stick Figure." Maybe there is some bitterness here, but really it is about seeing the insanity in that culture in which the protagonist exists. The protagonist questions and finds fault with that dieting and image-obsessed culture. There is a period of trying to resist the ridiculousness before finally the protagonist caves. The writer is up against a similar thing.

The conversation with her coach was insane. It was so unbelievable that I laughed. I said to myself 'Are you serious?' He KNOWS one of his runners is bulimic and doesn't seem phased by it. Then he turns the girl's concerns around on her and criticizes her weight.

As far as this blog goes, I really want to say "Write the damn book already." I am just impatient. I'm so curious to see how the season plays out and always waiting for that next entry. More than anything, I would like to know how the writer is affected to this day by her college experience, how her teammates are coping or where their lives went after college, the extent to which they recovered.

So you can run a bit. Hooray. But you'll never run as fast as your male equivalent with a similar metabolic profile doing the same training.

You want evidence?

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/tfn/records/records.jsp?listId=1

vs

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/tfn/records/records.jsp?sex=W&typeId=0&listId=2

More you say?

How about this study displaying increased myoelectric activity and decreased oxygen saturation in women, indicating the need for more rapid motor unit turnover (less contractile force per MU due do decreased 02 flux, which you already should have known if you really were an MD student):

The relationship between oxygenation and myoelectric activity in the forearm and shoulder muscles of males and females.

Elcadi GH, Forsman M, Crenshaw AG.

Or this one displaying decreased hamstring stiffness in women, leading to compromised ability to resist changes in length due to movement:

Sex comparison of hamstring structural and material properties.

Blackburn JT, Bell DR, Norcross MF, Hudson JD, Kimsey MH.

More conclusively, how about this study showing increased muscle damage in men, leading to a concomitantly increased catabolic (and thus anabolic) response to muscle stress:

Gender-related differences in muscle injury, oxidative stress, and apoptosis.

Kerksick C, Taylor L 4th, Harvey A, Willoughby D.

Better yet, lets discuss something you can probably understand:

A study noting the difference in contractile properties due to different fiber type distribution.

Sorry dear, but I work in skeletal muscle. Your argument has already been lost.

To the poster who said "we are evolving," do you have any understanding of your statement? Society is adapting. Cultures are re-structuring. But we have NOT, let me repeat, NOT evolved since the 1950s. Just because we're in a new age that makes us all feel "equivalent" doesn't mean that you can do the same things that men can, and vice versa.

It's a double-edged sword. We get to run faster and jump higher and play harder. Yay! But you get to live 10-15 years longer, captivate and motivate us to fight for your hand, and are given the greatest gift of all: the ability to literally create life. Are you saying you're unhappy with the tradeoff?

Something that has not yet been discussed...WHAT TYPE OF PROGRAM HAS THEIR WOMEN RUNNING 85 MPW???? This is tough for Pro women and yet the author says she has been running 85 mpw consistently..definitely cause for suspicion if you ask me

Well, its unfortunate that my post got cut.

Here you go:

Sex differences in contractile properties and fatigue resistance of human skeletal muscle.

Wüst RC, Morse CI, de Haan A, Jones DA, Degens H.

I hate triple posts.

I don't think pointing out someone's cruelty is the same thing as actually being cruel to other people. I thought the portrayal of the female assistant was very cruel, for example - especially as people track down the details of the author and start revealing who these people likely are, how do you think that coach would feel about the things the author says about her? The head coach is portrayed in such a way that if these stories are accurate it's hard to have any sympathy for him, but what does the female do that makes her deserve the kind of mockery? Do the issues the author has completely excuse that?

I'm not denying there are genuine problems with the program, or that the author is struggling with the beginning stages of an eating disorder and other issues. I'm just saying that the hurfulness that other people's actions have doesn't disappear because the person has a reason for their behavior. Somewhere one of her teammates might be writing a blog going "I thought I had a good race with my teammate at the dual meet, and when I turned to congratulate her she screamed in my face and stomped off. I was stunned. On the return trip, I stared out of the window of the van wondering what I had done and why my teammate seemed to hate me and wishing I could just die." And then everyone would be empathizing with her and her experience and saying how insane her interaction with her teammate was, etc.

I'm sure the coach has his reasons for how he behaves too - he's under pressure, he's in over his head, etc. Ultimately he is responsible for cultivating and encouraging a toxic and negative team environment, but I just don't think that this girl's personal issues totally excuse the ways in which she contributes to that environment or removes all the responsibility from her for her share in the negative team environment.

.

oh ya... wrote:

Something that has not yet been discussed...WHAT TYPE OF PROGRAM HAS THEIR WOMEN RUNNING 85 MPW???? This is tough for Pro women and yet the author says she has been running 85 mpw consistently..definitely cause for suspicion if you ask me

85 mpw is not tough for pro women, let alone serious collegiate women. This is maybe a bit over 90 mins a day of running at most.

How about we stop judging the character of the author based on the character of the narrator...its an obvious literary technique, she's attempting to capture the world seen through a college female runner.if the narrator was morally sympathetic through the whole thing, we wouldn't understand how the mind of the narrator worked at this fragile point in time.

Kara Goucher has stated that she has never run above 90 MPW and trust me 85mpw is NOT the norm for even elite female collegiate runners. If that was the case EVERONE would be injured

Source: My daughter runs for a large D1 program

This is actually not true.

In many states, teachers owe fiduciary duties to their students. In that sense, teachers are more like a parent, a priest, a lawyer, or a therapist in that they an affirmative duty to look out for the interests of their children/parishioners/clients/students.

To the extent that the track coach holds himself out as a "mentor" or "caring for his runners" (e.g., during recruiting), he has duties that extend beyond employer/employee.

How many employers can legaly require their employees to lose weight? Yes-- fire departments and the military can require that their employees meet certain physical standards, but there are obvious concerns for the safety of others there. Who's health is endangered by an overweight D1 runner?

In most cases, your employer will not be able to insist that you lose weight. Even the airlines have had significant trouble with weight requirements for stewards/stewardesses...

In the real world, people in a position of trust are sued for abusing that trust.

In the real world, it is not acceptable to play upon the insecurities of teenage girls for personal gain.

The man is scum.

So since women aren't as good at running as men (largely due to something called testosterone) that all women should just stop running and leave it up to the men? Women's running is only going to continue to increase in popularity. I'm sorry if you can't deal with that. And pointing out the female characteristics that you consider redeeming does nothing for your argument. I feel bad for any woman who gets involved with you.

No one goes to Florida State for the academics. B.C. The van ride was probably to Mass General.