Tuesday, April 17, 2018

How Americans can dominate in distance running

Apparently, judging by the results from the Boston Marathon, all you've got to do is run distance events below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and introduce some strong winds.  Maybe we could do the Summer Olympics next time in Murmansk (Russia), Barrow (Alaska), Oulu (Finland), or perhaps even Antarctica.  Suffice it to say that the runners from the U.S. and Canada showed some serious sisu. Well done!


It reminds me of watching--with some despair of course--the Big Ten team's (nearly) annual collapse in the Rose Bowl back in the eighties, and pondering whether they'd have done better if the game were played in a more neutral venue like Lambeau or Soldier Field instead of UCLA's home field.   Either that, or I would have just enjoyed watching all those Californians shiver on New Year's Day. 

2 comments:

Gino said...

running the Boston Marathon, or any marathon, is what stupid people do on a perfectly good day off.

Bike Bubba said...

:^) I've never run a full marathon, but I have done the Pike's Peak Ascent several times (13.4 miles and up 8000', similar in difficulty to a marathon), and there's a tremendous amount of fun in getting together with hundreds of other people and encouraging each other to a common goal. One nice thing about the longer distances is that the "type a" people burn out quickly, and it's tremendously supportive.