What Makes A Marathoner?
Let’s start off this post by recalling a recent Deadspin article, “Steve Jones Raw: Starting And Finishing A Marathon Doesn’t Make You A Marathoner” in which Steve Jones is quoted as saying, “Mass participation has hurt the sport, in my mind. It’s made a lot of people a lot of money. I have to be careful what I say because I get called out on it sometimes, but I don’t believe that starting and finishing a marathon makes you a marathoner. I don’t believe that. If you’re racing it to go as fast as you can, that’s completely different than being part of an event and just wanting to get from point A to point B.”
So you may be asking yourself… “what’s the point? why put in the effort if I don’t have the talent?” well you’ll be relieved to know that I don’t exactly have the same viewpoint as Steve Jones… sure I don’t have the same pedigree as Jones but that doesn’t mean that his argument isn’t flawed.
Let’s start with mass participation
The number of marathoners as a whole in the 80’s vs now has increased and of course that will skew towards the slower runners as opposed to bringing out more talent. The wealth of training knowledge is more accessible now vs 30 years ago and the act of training for a marathon is more socially acceptable now than it would have been in the 80’s. This all leads to an increase of 4,5&6 hour marathoners… however this doesn’t meant these runners aren’t training to beat the clock. The idea that you aren’t trying to pr every race out there is asinine — if you go through the rigors of training and are able to traverse the 26.2 then you are a marathoner. Period. Plain and simple.
Point A to Point B
What Steve Jones fails to remember is something that I have a hard time remembering from time to time… running is hard! By that I mean the act of running is hard and it is especially hard to build up the mileage needed to run a marathon when you don’t have a ton of running experience. You have to build and when you start to have decades of running experience it’s hard to remember what that initial grind feels like. This is where the running from point A to point B argument falls apart — Sometimes the goal is to finish the marathon and not because you are running ‘for fun’ — I’ve had runners of my own whose sole goal was to finish a marathon and then build off that going forward. The fact that you finished a marathon after making it through the rigors of training and still have to justify the right to call yourself a marathoner… it’s unreal.
The Disconnect
The problem then becomes the disconnect between the “elites” and the “rest of the pack”. What makes the marathon so beautiful — you have elite athletes running at world record pace while at the same time you can follow behind them proving yourself over the very same course they have. Sure the odds of you running their pace for even a 5k are slim but you can cover the ground they just burned through before they’re finished with their cool down. Imagine watching KD score the last of his 45 as you step onto the court to play a game yourself… no other sport can you be this close to the action. Yet the elites often seem closed off to the rest of the runners — why is there this disconnect. Is it because we mortals are so similar to the elites in the sport we compete in or is it because running is such an individual endeavor?
I think there is a lot that needs to be done to close this gap — that’s how we find more spectators interested in the sport and that’s how we stop articles like this from being so prevalent. This sport has a built in fan base of 17 million racers who already know what it’s like to suffer through the training and can relate to the struggle of every athlete. Elites and legends of the sport need to do a better job at being an ambassadors for the sport instead of gatekeepers!
Those are my thoughts, we build this sport back up by working together, what do you think? Do you agree with Steve Jones? Would you offer a different solution?
Happy Running,
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