I’ve been having…
…connectivity problems. This is the first time I’ve been online today. So here are a few links; better late than never:
—Bookworm has some reflections for the first night of Passover, which is this evening.
—Paul Krugman says hey, let’s not be civil any more. Actually, I wasn’t aware he’d been civil for a long, long, time.
Krugman first came to my attention even before I was a blogger, back when I was smack in the middle of my political change. It was this 2003 incident involving Krugman and Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad that made me realize how deeply duplicitous and self-serving Krugman had become.
There, is that uncivil enough? Hope so. But maybe not.
—Today was Patriot’s Day and marathon day in Boston. The weather was ideal, and winner Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya set a world record, except that he didn’t, because the Boston course doesn’t qualify.
I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot fathom how any human being can run 26 miles in 2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds. Or even in double that time. Or run it at all. What’s more, 53-year-old former champ Joan Benoit Samuelson (how time flies) came in a very respectable 45th in the women’s field. Now there’s a woman with persistence and grit.
I for one certainly hope you solve those connectivity problems. I know that the wilds of New England are backwards provinces, but perhaps they could do something imaginative with this new wireless stuff we read about.
I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot fathom how any human being can run 26 miles in 2 hours 3 minutes and 2 seconds. Or even in double that time.
The same way people get to Carnegie Hall: practice. My athletic talents are very average, but in my twenties I ran until my knees wore down. I ran maybe 20-30 miles/ week at my peak, which is not an awful lot.
Perhaps my best run was in the Colombian mountains, at 5,000-6,000 feet, when I covered 14 miles in 2 hours. How much faster would that have been at sea level?
If an average person like myself can do that on 20-30 miles a week, I can see how a more talented person who runs 50 miles a week can do a marathon in 2-3 hours.
Until your knees wore down, while you were apparently still in your twenties? I thought you were a smart guy.
If you want to be an elite runner, you have to pick your parents carefully. No matter how hard they train, most people can not run even one sub five minute mile. The winner ran 26 of them in a row. Very impressive.
When I lived in Boulder, CO. I used to see people like Frank Shorter and other elite runners out loping along trails in the foothills. Amazing the way they could cover ground so quickly and smoothly. It appears to me that there is a “runners gene.” Some people were simply born to run. Many of them live in Kenya and Ethiopia. A few live here. More power to them. Run, Geoffrey, run!
I’ve run Boston twice out of a total 30 something marathons. My best time ever was 25 minutes slower than Mr. Mutai’s, and I thought I was accomplishing something. When I break down the per mile average pace of a 2:03 I get 4:42. My personal best mile time was a pedestrian 4:46. He didn’t even look tired after he crossed the finish line. Kudos and all that. It’s genetics and training and a never give up attitude.
I don’t run anymore. Haven’t for 20 years. Arthritis in the right knee. If there is ever a need to run, I’ll be the one the bear catches.
And then there is the topic of former Enron adviser Krugman; not anything about Krugman that I am aware of that would give a reasonable person something positive to say. Loathsome limousine liberal is the kindest description I can come up with.
I used to run cross-country in high school, and enjoyed it. Don’t run much now, 20 years later, but I ran enough to know that hardcore distance runners are a different breed of athlete. Has anybody over 6 feet tall ever won a marathon?
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/marathon.htm
For those that know not the history of the Battle of Marathon and from which we adopted and continue to use the term for long distance running, go and tell the Sparta… I mean Athenians.
The Battle of Marathon was a great victory for Greece and Athens. Prophetically, this did give rise to Athens as first amongst equals in the Greek city-states. But if the runner hadn’t made it back to Athens in time, the city might have simply surrendered at the sight of the Persian fleets on the assumption that their main military force had been defeated. There were nothing but boys and old men manning the walls for all of Athen’s manpower was on the beaches fighting the Persian invaders.