I don’t generally crow aloud regarding my stats or number of races. Usually when someone asks me how many marathons I’ve done I simply say, “I’ve run the 50 states” and leave it at that. I don’t know if it’s a fear of “jinxing” the running, a superstitious belief that saying things aloud somehow tempts the world to knock one down a peg, an anti-The Secret styling. I don’t know if it’s out of sheepish embarrassment at the privileges and advantages I’ve had in traveling, relative health and minor injury considerations. I don’t know if it’s out of respect for what others have done — some have done far more than me, some less, but ANYONE who gets up off the couch and goes out for a mile, a 5K, a half, a full, a WHATEVER deserves respect and praise. And it’s not a competition with others; it’s just… personal.
I know this is a bizarre thing to discuss on my website that is devoted to my crazed running stats and adventures. But somehow posting to the faceless internet wherein my readership never cracks the tens – well, that seems relatively ok in the tooting one’s own horn and self-promotional nonsense.
At the Sedona Marathon, I ran for a bit with this great guy named Lance. He was a machine — crushing it and I struggled to keep up with him in the opening miles. He was from Durango, CO, and we chatted to pass a few clicks and minutes amongst the red rocks of the Coconino National Forest area. When I motioned toward the rock formations on the horizon and said this was why I came to run here, Lance said it was why he was here too. I mentioned that Colorado has some beautiful vistas too but he said it wasn’t the same as this… but that he’d run a lot in CO and was thus glad to go a bit further afield too. I asked how many he’d done and he said this was his 11th marathon. I sincerely said that was mighty impressive. He then asked me how many marathons I’d done. I stuck to my usual line about having run the 50 states. He said that was impressive and asked how many I ran a year. Again, I hemmed and hawed bit and said I now just run places that sound fun or different or provide an excuse to travel and see something new. He pressed again and I said, “Oh, I think I run about 50 a year…” but I slurred the number and he said back to me, “Wow! Fifteen a year is a lot!” I agreed because honestly 15 is part of 50 and it wasn’t necessarily a lie… and there was no reason to go into greater detail as it wasn’t going to really change the discussion I wanted to have which was, “Can you believe the beautiful places we get to run through?”
I mentioned all this because I belong to this Marathon Maniacs club. I don’t often update my stats on their website as again I mainly just keep tabs on what races people have had good experiences at and use the club for discounts on registrations. I’m a lifetime member having prepaid my dues (lifetime is relative — I think it’s only good for 99 years… but that’s pretty lifetime if you ask me).
Anyway, on the club Facebook page, a member posted what was clearly a click-bait piece he had written to promote his compression socks company (yeah… that’s a thing). I’m not going to link directly to it as I don’t want to encourage clicks through controversy but I will post a few screengrabs to convey my point.
A few quick background notes on the Marathon Maniacs – the minimal requirement to join (aka Bronze Level) is to run two marathons within a 16 day time period or three marathons within 90 days. So this is a club for people who run a lot of marathons. In fact, the highest level, Titanium, has this as its criteria: 52 Marathons or more within 365 days OR 30 Marathons in 30 different US states, Countries, or Canadian Provinces (any combination) within 365 days OR 20 Countries within 365 days.
So to this group, a guy posted this article: “My thoughts on running a full marathon and why you probably shouldn’t run several full marathons.“
Posting that to a Marathon Maniacs page is like throwing a Molotov cocktail into a Russian mob front bar.
In his opening paragraphs he writes:
After a drunken bet with a few lads back in 2008, we took up the challenge of running Shanghai’s 2008 full marathon – we were studying for a semester in Shanghai back then. We had two months to prepare it, most of us were 23 years old and we were looking for a thrilling experience.
At the time, it was a good thing to do, because we weren’t that busy and we had lots of energy to spend.
We trained hard. Perhaps not properly at the time, but we did put in the hours of long-term runs. We associated it with football sessions.
Then, out of nowhere, it was time.
The race was one of the hardest things I had ever done at the time.
I admit I made the mistake of buying cheap running shoes at Shanghai’s Decathlon store. Never made it past the 20th mile, because of a persistent pain in my shins, and I can blame my desire to save a few bucks for that.
Because I didn’t want to risk a major injury, I stopped and got on the bus of shame, the one that drives you all the way to the finish line. I was devastated. Most of my friends had finished the race and I was left without a trophy to boast about.
A lot of runners start training for their first marathon this way — it’s a drunken bet, or a crazed notion, an acknowledgment that it’s kinda bonkers to go run 26.2 miles but, hey, why not? It’s kinda how I got started — I always wanted to do one and finally bought a book off of Amazon to plan my training accordingly. I’ve mentioned this many times, but I’ll plug that book once more as it got me started, and started with a clear vision of NOT getting injured by systematically building up to the marathon distance.
Anyway, the author, who by the way looks like this on his blog page:
goes on to write:
Again, everyone is different and should be encouraged and praised for even attempting to run ANY distance, let alone completing the challenges he or she sets out to accomplish. But when you post an article like this to an organization that literally is maniacal about running marathons, well, the phrasing of how some people run as many as 4 marathons in a year can be a bit… low on the estimate side. Here’s where my arrogance comes in — I ran 4 marathons in January 2017 alone. So forgive me if I don’t think this guy is the end-all authority on whether I should or should not be running races.
It’s clear though what his intentions really are in the closing passage:
It’s all a marketing ploy, something designed to elicit a response and force clicks and commentary to drive traffic and therefore ad revenue to this gentleman’s site. I get it, I do. Everybody’s trying to make a buck, and honestly the reality is if you want to try and remain injury free running races or distances of any kind, you have to listen to your body, have a plan for training and development, and build up to the distance you’re trying to reach. One doesn’t just crack knuckles and go out and run a great distance; I mean, you can, and you might even finish. But the training is designed so you have a good experience and can wake up the next morning without feeling completely destroyed. The training is the foundation of recovery. And it sounds like this guy didn’t respect the the distance or figure out the training regimen that would work for him to achieve his goals. And maybe he really does want to engage in a dialogue over how best to train and run a marathon… or multiple marathons in a short period of time. But I’m feeling cynical today. And for some reason I’m taking this guy’s post personal today because it feels like he’s telling me I’m doing something wrong and I should quit.
If we all gave up when things were hard, we’d never get anything done. And if we all trusted the, and I can’t believe I’m typing this, but if we all trusted the so-called “experts,” we might never know what we could really achieve and accomplish. By the same token, there ARE experts who do know a thing or two… like all things in life, evaluate the sources, consider the evidence, test and retest the hypotheses and theories and how they work or don’t work for you, and make up your own mind.
An individual’s running is as much grounded in the scientific method as anything considered by Newton, Einstein, Nye, or deGrasse Tyson.
Construct a Hypothesis.
Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment.
Analyze Your Data.
Draw a Conclusion.
Communicate Your Results.
***
Late Post Update: I should note that from the time I first started writing this to the time I posted it, someone deleted the linked message from the Marathon Maniacs group page. Whether it was Dewi or a group administrator who foresaw that no good would come from posting this article to Maniacs, I can’t say. I’m not in any way shape or form in support of censorship or redacted revisions of the past. I can tell you I saw the article posted to Facebook and stand behind what I’ve said here.
However, I should note that today I decided to take a short sabbatical from “social media” and I deactivated my own personal Facebook account for the next five days. I just need a break from all that. I’m still on email and posting here at runkevinrun.com, but a few days away from the FB seems like the right course of action at the moment. I’m in a foul mood and seemingly itching for a fight… though I hope this post itself reads more like a “I can’t really believe this is a thing!” than an attempt to get into a virtual internet street brawl. Because I don’t want that, I just honestly can’t really believe this is a thing that got posted to a group of runners that by definition are looking to run a maniacal number of marathons.