Runners World, I believe offered its readers a well timed and appropriate response to all of the negative and nasty sentiments runners were hearing after the NYC Marathon fiasco. No runner was spared from verbal lashing by just about anyone with an opinion on the whole hurricane Sandy thing- geez- runners who weren't even registered for the marathon... runners who have never ran the NYC marathon- even runners who have never ran marathons were on the receiving end of criticism just for being someone who runs. note: i am not addressing people who have had their homes or towns ruined in the hurricane... that's crap. and crap happens. i know it- i'm from Beach Haven, NJ. i'm with you. i'm personally hurt and offended by the multitude of opinion sharers that had VERY nasty sentiments for the runners...
Social media was only making matters worse. Runners were being called everything from "appalling" to "sweaty idiots" a radio show host asked NY residents if anyone was "up for tripping runners sunday"...
this made me feel like these preachers were the self absorbed ones in this instance. completely beknownst to them is human suffering on a massive scale going on every single day in other parts of this world. how many of them are constantly emptying their closets and giving away the food they bought to feed themselves and their families? runners do this every weekend in cities all over the US and the world. millions of dollars are raised and donated to charitable causes. still, somewhere every weekend, a marathon is held regardless of starving children somewhere who would benefit from clean water and our bananas. staten islanders only started lambasting runners when THEY needed the bananas and water. before the storm, marathoners were heroes. after the storm (through no fault of our own) we're suddenly assholes who want to hog our bananas to ourselves. not because we're not sending them all over to villages in Jamaica equally as devastated by Sandy- but because the staten islanders think they themselves should be entitled to them. runners pay their entry fee which covers the cost of their gatorade, water, bananas, oranges- all of it. they bought it. it is their food. almost no different than you or i going to stop and shop and purchasing your nourishment for the day. these items are not free, and are not being wasted on "sweaty idiots". if water and food was so desperately needed, why weren't the professional sporting arenas and stadiums providing cases of water and provisions? everyone completely overlooked the fact that professional basketball and football games were still being played, and fans were still paying hundreds of dollars for tickets, endlessly flowing beer, and stuffing their faces with more food in two hours than a marathoner consumes in four! who are the sweaty idiots now? i thoroughly loathe double standards.
but herein lies the answer- are marathon runners as beloved as we think we are? are we really? i'm tending to think the answer is no. i've learned this for myself on a smaller more personal scale- but Mark Remy explains beautifully:
"Contempt for us? For Marathoners? Where did that come from?
It was there all along. Simmering.
Here's the thing: Many runners, especially marathoners tend to live in a bubble. We revel in our specialness, our otherness, and move in circles that reinforce and amplify this. Not only that, we feel compelled to let total strangers know that we run marathons. So we slap 26.2 stickers on our cars, share details of our training runs on the web, wear our Boston Marathon jackets to the supermarket. Marathoners are tough. Noble. Heroic even. Don't believe me? Just ask one.
When we converge on a city for a race, the bubble swells, barely containing the collective greatness of thousands of Very Special People Who Have Trained So Hard and Sacrificed So Much to Make It Here. We check into hotels full of other runners and attend expos and seminars dedicated to us, and crowd into bars, restaurants, and coffee houses full of other marathoners.
Race weekend is essentially a days-long celebration of these tens of thousands of Very Special People interacting almost exclusively with fellow Very Special People and with others there to applaud them. The celebration, of course, culminates in the marathon itself. We are cheered for, urged on, photographed, and ultimately welcomed by smiling volunteers eager to wrap us in a mylar blanket and drape a medal- a medal!- around our neck.
But outside our bubble, where the other 99 percent of the population lives, we aren't so special. Many people tolerate big city marathons at best. Think about it. We barge into town, clog sidewalks, take over all the decent restaurants, then shut down 26.2 miles of city streets for half a day. All while mugging for photos, and glaring at anyone who lights a cigarette within 20 feet of us. Horray for marathoners, right?"
what i've taken away from the Sandy fiasco is that somewhere deep down, non runners have been itching to take runners down a notch or two, and this storm was the perfect opportunity to act on what they've been feeling all along. runners are a group of pretentious, self important sweaty idiots. sadly, it took a natural disaster to coax it out of them. well, i'm glad it's all out in the open now because personally, all these years, i never thought you were entitled to my bananas anyway.
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