The cop-out races
As racing has become more popular there is a minor irritation that continues to bother me. I have run many races of varying distances. Running races as short as 1/2 mile all the way through the marathon also sprint and international triathlons.
In my opinion endurance sports begin at the 10K. If you can run 6 miles you are an endurance athlete. You are doing something most people choose not to. If you tell an average person you ran 6 miles they would probably be impressed and most likely drop some comment like “I don’t even like driving 6 miles”.
This brings me to the point of this post. Not all race titles are created equal in title. The main factor in this is the word “half”. The word half automatically downgrades your accomplishment. For example, I have in the past run many “10 milers”. If I say to person A that I just ran the Soldier Field 10 Miler they will respond with an impressed comment. However, if I say I ran a half marathon they will either respond with a ho-hum response or, if they are actually interested, they will ask how long that is.
From a participants perspective it is the same. I tend to feel underwhelmed hearing “half” marathon. It does not seem like 13 miles from description alone.
Even worse is the race I am going to this weekend. They dropped the “half” from the marathon and replaced it with “mini”. I’m sorry but a mini-marathon sounds like one of those lame baby crawling things they used to do in the malls.
To take this even further, I would guess the pinnacle of my endurance race life would be to do a 70.3 triathlon. This consists of a 1.25 mile swim, 56 mile bike ride, and a half marathon. It can take upwards of 7 hours to complete. It’s called….a half Ironman. It is so bad many of these races have changed their names to Ironman 70.3 races.
I am wondering what the next step will be to legitimatize our accomplishments.