anyone ever just show up to a marathon or longer spontaneously and run it?

In the 70s if you were running when you were out of school and racing you were almost certainly running more than maybe 80% of the people who are runners today do. Most of the people in my club were in the vicinity of 100 miles a week. There was a small number of people who were maybe doing 40-50. How many runners today do even 40-50? So you're right, running marathons was not a huge deal in the sense that you'd need months to get ready to finish one. You might need months to get ready to finish one as fast as you wanted to but almost anyone who was a competitive runner back then was always doing enough volume to be able to run a marathon at any given time.

There were people who ran small amounts of mileage for their health, joggers, but they weren't competitive and generally didn't race. If they did, it was usually at some "beginners" event.The DC Road Runners Club usually had a 2 mile "fun run" accompanying their weekly road race and it was there for joggers who were interested. But the fields were always much smaller than they were for the main event.

Yes Half wrote:

A cute girl I wanted to see was doing it so I entered on a lark. The girl never showed cuz her cat was sick but I ran it anyway...

I ended up hooking up with the girl later that year so the entire experience was worth it.

You hooked up with the girl with the sick cat?? Gross!

I did a 10 miles tempo run Saturday morning, and saw an old friend on facebook was in town to run a marathon later that night. When I said I'd come out the next day to cheer him on, he begged me to pace him for a Boston Marathon qualifier. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to help him but I did.

The only problem was the face that I ate way to much and had to poo so many times.

Sara Palin wrote:

Yes Half wrote:

A cute girl I wanted to see was doing it so I entered on a lark. The girl never showed cuz her cat was sick but I ran it anyway...

I ended up hooking up with the girl later that year so the entire experience was worth it.

You hooked up with the girl with the sick cat?? Gross!

Yeah, the cat was dying of cancer. It ultimately did die. You've never been with a woman that lost a pet?

Try harder wrote:

Yes Half wrote:

Yep. Half marathon. I was a lifter and never ran more than 3 miles in training or more than 10 in a week.

A cute girl I wanted to see was doing it so I entered on a lark. The girl never showed cuz her cat was sick but I ran it anyway. I started easy and actually was surprised I didn't die. Ended up with a 1.38 finish and I negative split the whole race. I could barely walk for days after though.

I ended up hooking up with the girl later that year so the entire experience was worth it.

Idiot. This thread is about marathon or longer only. Try to read.

I did read it. The thread was slowing down and I felt my story was close enough and interesting enough to venture slightly from the original criteria.

Do you do everything exactly as you are told? Do you always drive the speed limit and cross at all crosswalks? Live a little.

i don't care enough for any of that to matter. it was just a long hard run. a few meters or few seconds don't change anything the matters.

Yes Half wrote:

Try harder wrote:

Idiot. This thread is about marathon or longer only. Try to read.

I did read it. The thread was slowing down and I felt my story was close enough and interesting enough to venture slightly from the original criteria.

Do you do everything exactly as you are told? Do you always drive the speed limit and cross at all crosswalks? Live a little.

Except you started your write up with "yep. Half marathon." When the answer to the written question would have very obviously been "no, but I did for a half marathon." So, I'm going to have to agree that you didn't read it. Also, your story was not interesting enough.

My first marathon was a 5K marathon that I just decided to run spur of the moment. 40 minutes flat!

Selfies wrote:

I trained hard for six months for the St. George Marathon...I went 4:35

This is hilarious.

But here's the best part: there's another runner in our office (Greg) who's my age (early 40s) and runs marathons all the time in the 2:55 range. But nobody thinks he's a bad-ass runner because everyone knows he runs all the time--like 70-80 miles/week. So they expect him to be fast. He doesn't join us for lunches or drinks after work because he "has to run"--it's like it's his whole life or something.He has maybe 50 FB friends, and his posts about his race get him 10-20 likes.My "off the bench" 4:35 got me over 350 FB likes, and everyone thinks I'm a better runner than Greg is because I can pull that off and still go out to lunch and drinks with the gang.I see nothing at all sad about this, except for the fact that Greg is so needlessly skinny and gets so little appreciation for his efforts.(P.S.: Is Pumpkins really your last name?)

David S. Pumpkins wrote:

This is a sad story for so many reasons. I'm sorry you're like this.

Umm... ever heard of Robert Young?

David S. Pumpkins wrote:

Yes Half wrote:

I did read it. The thread was slowing down and I felt my story was close enough and interesting enough to venture slightly from the original criteria.

Do you do everything exactly as you are told? Do you always drive the speed limit and cross at all crosswalks? Live a little.

Except you started your write up with "yep. Half marathon." When the answer to the written question would have very obviously been "no, but I did for a half marathon." So, I'm going to have to agree that you didn't read it. Also, your story was not interesting enough.

I think you're jealous I get laid more than your bony ass.