Fantastic fast times, George. I'm curious, is a Master over 40? I've heard the term Grand Master, which I assume must be over 50? Did you stop running marathons when you turned 40?
PRs: Boston Marathon, 3:27, April 15th 2013
Cornwall Half-Marathon, 1:35, April 27th 2013
18 marathons, 18 BQs since 2010
Are we there, yet?
Until I started training for ultras two years ago, my last marathon had been in 1981 when I was 35.
2024 Races:
03/09 - Livingston Oval Ultra 6-Hour, 22.88 miles
05/11 - D3 50K, 9:11:09 05/25 - What the Duck 12-Hour
06/17 - 6 Days in the Dome 12-Hour.
Just read a great article in RT about attitude. http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/elite-state-mind?page=single
Just read a great article in RT about attitude.
http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/elite-state-mind?page=single
Interesting article, that's for sure. A main takeaway being that we need to think about how other people will interpret comments and actions that are not necessarily meant to "snub", as the author puts it.
"There's this idea that when you're in the front of the pack you deserve something [attention, respect] that people in the back of the pack may not deserve," she says, "that it's really about 'us and our experience, up here at the front.'"
"Most of the runners I talked to seem not to look past their own communities," Henning says, noting that the majority of her subjects were white, middle-or upper-middle-class, and in their late 20s to mid-40s. "They don't seem to be conscious of what's outside their immediate running experience. They don't want to consider people who may work two or three jobs or who don't have access to the same advantages that they do."
So, so wrong. On Sunday, I was able to say "good job" and clap for the last-place finisher while passing on the out-and-back, and it was 100% sincere. She finished the same 13.1 as everyone else. The hills were just as tall. The cold was just as cold. I don't know what her background was, but she made the time and the commitment to train, and that makes her a real runner. Maybe it was her first HM. If so, it probably meant a lot more to her than any of the people "up front".
As for the second paragraph, it's bullshit. Running is one of the sports least influenced by socioeconomic status. If you needed to be born into a privileged life to be good, we'd call it golf. There probably aren't a lot of manicured greens in Iten or Eldoret.
Our community as runners is Earth. Try not to look past it.
Jay, I'd have to disagree about the socioeconomic status thing just in the sense that if you do work a physically demanding job (and not everyone who has a low income does, by any means) then it's going to be a lot harder to go out and train after work. Not impossible, of course, but tougher.
I've though a little bit about the elite vs. nonelite thing, and to some degree all racing comes down to amount of time with race level effort. In that context, what the elites experience in a marathon is closer to my HM experience, for example. But I think that the comparison only goes so far in the sense that elites do train to handle more physical distress than I am, and of course there are the physical demands of 26.2. But, in the purest sense of race effort over time, my 10K is almost their HM, etc.
To me, an elite is simply someone who can run times at, or faster than, times required by some official organizations (which I'm completely ignorant of). You can be very fast, like maybe just a minute away from the required time for Olympic trials, or whatever, but you're still just a very fast runner. Not an elite. So in that context, if you're not elite and I'm not elite, then we're just two recreational racers, meaning we're the same. You're just faster than I am, that's all.
Also, in my mind, there is a difference between a racer and a runner. Some people have been runners all their lives, but have never raced. They are still very much real runners. Some people race, but just for fun. They are of course real runners, but they are not real racers. It's got nothing to do with where they finish in the ranking. They could be last and still be considered real racers. It's just a mindset, in my opinion. If you enter the race with the idea that you don't care to try to pass people, you just want to have fun, then you're not there to race, you're there to run and have fun. Absolutely nothing wrong with that and you're still a real runner.
Btw, I found this paragraph extremely sad:
But they treated me as an equal. We discussed training, diet, and their lives in cities across the U.S. and Mexico, where they lived on athletic visas. One had a 2-month-old daughter in Ethiopia he had yet to see. Another said that if she won enough races that year, she'd be able to go home to Kenya and see her family; if not, she'd be stuck in Mexico until she could raise enough prize money for a plane ticket. We grew so familiar in those few days that I almost started to think of myself as an elite–their encouragement helping to feed that delusion.
I don't really see the equality there. Does the author have to win races to be allowed to see his children?
I took it as the runner from Africa needed to win prize money to afford a plane ticket as they were living in the US or Mexico.
Yes. Something few of us are concerned with when we participate in races.
Hip Redux
But we also aren't making money off of racing. She might have been able to stay local if she chose a different profession? I don't know. But I know plenty of folks who sacrifice family time for their jobs.
Yes. I suppose it's not exclusive to running. It's just that for me, that is the real difference between an elite and a recreational runner. The sacrifices are not the same.
About socioeconomic status, I work on a school. We have a lot of staff who are aides. They are not paid much and it is a challenging job. We've had workplace teams for some 5ks that support the local autism community. I don't think twice about a $25-35 entry, but the cost is high enough that it keeps people from participating.
I agree. The rewards aren't the same, either. I think the point of the article though was to say that true elites recognize that even though recreational runners are different, it's not a scale of good/bad. We're all in it for different reasons and that's not to say any one person's reasons are right or wrong.
Unlike some snotty people who think they are better than everyone else because they can run fast. >:P
Well, we have to admit that if they run faster than us, then they are better at it than us. But it's just running, right? It doesn't really make them "better" than us.
Better at running, sure. Not better at life or as a person.
Exactly.
Because I run slow but I think we can all agree that I'm pretty awesome.