Here's my post, with spelling corrected. Hope I caught 'em all:
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Interesting post. It made me think something that I haven't thought before, or wanted to think: that Hall's attitude toward the marathon is incredibly entitled and whitebread--incredibly far from Wesley Korir's attitude, for example, or the attitude of the great majority of East Africans. For them, everything depends on throwing it all down, ALL of it, and making the leap into big $$$ and a transformed life in a poor part of the world.
Hall can afford to sustain his "All that matters is allowing God to unfold in my life" trip, in other words, because he's ours. He's America. He's entitled; he's living in one of the richest countries in the world. His sponsorships are solid. HE'S NOT HUNGRY. In all senses of that word.
I'm not criticizing him. There are indeed many reasons to race. But when he talks in the New Yorker article about running in Ethiopia at 9,000 feet and suddenly being surrounded by Ethiopian runners, he wants us in some way to see him as one of Them. And he's not. Not in the way that he imagines. The economic grounds on which he runs could not be more different.
I don't want to use the word "spoiled." But I won't argue with people who try to make that case.
Speaking personally, I'd like to see him a little edgier, a little hungrier, and little more determined--like Pre--to inflict his will on the world and his competitors.
Pre was like that in part because he was a working-class guy. He believed in hurting himself more than the next guy was capable of hurting himself.
At a certain point, LR's have to take sides: Pre or Hall? I'll go with the working man--the guy determined to craft himself, rather than the guy determined to let God craft him. I'll go with Wesley Korir, who worked and worked and worked and finally had his day--and then kept working and also thought about how to use the fruits of his own hard work to help his nation.
But that's just me.
Read more:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6377805&page=3#ixzz3UhfMsa1T