While traditionalists have lamented any or all of these changes to sports that date back as far back as recorded time, those of the more modern view wax poetic about change being the necessary catalyst to take away the old and replace with the newer, more modernized old and being yesterday’s sports into today’s culture.
Despite these seemingly endless conflicts and, with no resolution in sight, at least we, as sporting participants, can recognize that no matter whether one can make a 3-point basket, run with shoes or without or never take the field except with a bat in your hands, at the end of the day, these sports still remain largely intact and the same skills that were required long ago are still required today to be successful.
Unfortunately, there is a growing cabal of ‘runners’ these days who is trying to fundamentally challenge what is means to run a marathon and are trying to change the long-held wisdom dictating that
running a marathon means averaging a pace that above walking speeds (note: for purposes of this post, I will define above walking speeds at a 13 minute/mile which is the point at which turn from fast walking to slow running) . Unlike barefoot running, where at least there is running being done, this new outgrowth of runners , led by such people as the New York Times’ Tara Parker-Pope, is trying to argue that, “covering the 26.2 miles is the crux of the accomplishment [completing a marathon], no matter the pace. They say that marathons inspire people to get off their couches, if only to cross off an item on the Things to Do Before I Die list”.In Plodders Have A Place, But Is It In A Marathon, the New York Times' Juliet Macur discusses this growing group of incredibly slow participants in marathons and questions whether they add to or detract from one’s overall marathon experience. Having trained for months on end and having fought through pain, weather and even more pain, many people who have finished a marathon in a running pace find that those people who finish marathons with times in excess of 6 hours (and slower average pace than 13 minutes per mile) are diminishing the accomplishment that goes along with running a marathon. Succinctly summarizing the views of the real runners, Adrienne Wald, the women’s cross-country coach at the College of New Rochelle, who ran her first marathon in 1984 told Marcus that, “It’s a joke to run a marathon by walking every other mile or by finishing in six, seven, eight hours…It used to be that running a marathon was worth something — there used to be a pride saying that you ran a marathon, but not anymore. Now it’s, ‘How low is the bar?’”
For the sake of full disclosure, I'm happy to admit that, at times, I too have walked along a marathon course. But the difference between me and people like Tara Parker-Pope is that I never actually plan to walk and can guarantee that, were I still on the marathon course after the 6-hour mark, I would stop and go home. In a past post, I actually commented on the uselessness of walking a marathon. A marathon is a test of endurance and, more to the point, is a running test. It is not a walkathon and anybody who thinks differently is most likely one of these people who finishes a marathon well past the 6-hour point.
One of the best parts of a marathon is the incredible pain one feels the day after having run those 26.2 miles. That pain is a reminder of the incredible accomplishment just completed. It is a reminder of the months dedicated to training the body. It is a pain that must be earned.
As the old saying goes, 'no pain, no gain.' These so-called plodders can preach (without the post-marathon pain, of course) until their blue in the face that, no matter how long they took to complete a marathon, they too have accomplished the same feat as the runner who took 3-hours to finish it. The same as even the runner who took 4 and 5 hours to finish. But no matter how much they try to convince themselves and others, they have, in reality, gained nothing and wasted their days.
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