What's Up at Runner's World?

[Guest]

Re: What's Up at Runner's World?

Thank you for that link. What a wonderful column! (Yes, there are totally sedentary track nuts out there and I'm proud to be among them, but I normally keep my pride to myself because I know I'm going to be drowned out by the chorus of runners-joggers who want to either dis me or convert me.)

What I don't understand is why everyone, when learning of my interst in track, asks if I was ever a competitive runner. If I were an ice hockey fan, would people ask if I ever played hockey? I doubt it--where I grew up and still live, nobody plays hockey. NFL stadiums are filled every Sunday, mostly by people who've never donned a football helmet. So why do track fans have to be runners?

I'm afraid that the answer, by the way, is that to most people here in the US, track is so out of the mainstream that people cannot imagine any other reason why anyone should follow the sport. I confess that if I met someone who was an avid fan of a really minor sport like fencing, I'd just assume that they once fenced. Sad to think that this is the state of our sport.

At any rate, whether or not you are a runner/jogger, read the column linked above and know that she speaks for many of us.

[tafnut]

Re: What's Up at Runner's World?

The irony of this statement:

"See, I cover athletes for a semi-living. And most of you people don't look anything like them."

is that we look a whole lot more like athletes than the rotundities that deride us. Every gut I see hanging over a belt, every flabby arm and thigh, every love-handle, every butt dragging in the sand, convinces me more and more that I shall run till I die, and if that is to be in a Fixxian pool of sweat, so be it.

[Guest]

Re: What's Up at Runner's World?

"This point was driven home to me last Sunday, when, about Mile 18 in the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, I humped my aching bones past a woman who was yakking on her cellphone."

This is the friend referred to in the above article:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... Blatchford