Category Archives: Opinion

THE LINE

11TrackThe lines in racing are evident and precise. At tomorrow’s Diamond League Adidas Grand Prix in New York City lines will define the arc of competition while designating starts and finishes.  If only life could be so simply striped.

Events around the globe have been effected by the bombings at the Boston Marathon this past April 15th.  And there is little doubt that these next ten months will be daunting for the Boston Athletic Association as they determine where to draw their own lines for Patriot’s Day 2014.

Yesterday, May 23rd, in his War on Terror policy re-set speech at the National Defense University in Virginia, President Obama brought up Boston as he enunciated the qualities which define America and which require, in his words, “efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.” (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) Continue reading →

IAAF ATHLETES’ HUB

IAAFMoscowWC     It has been a long road out of the moral wasteland of amateurism for running, and the sport still hasn’t made it all the way home.  In those critical years when the fight to open the sport was more of a pitched battle, a 38th-parallel type solution (see Korean Conflict) gave both sides breathing room, but left the sport a hybrid in the general public’s eye, neither amateur nor professional.

That truce remains largely in place today as the sport has formed up around independent contractor and event models that have rebuffed top-down cohesion while maintaining a vestige of its the amateur past by hiding what stakes it does offer in shoe contracts, appearance fees and time bonuses.  Add the revolving door of anonymous champions who come and go with increasing regularity up front as we tout fast times rather than fast individuals, and the lack of stars and rivalries breaking out of running’s insular bubble further erodes public consumption beyond the quadrennial binging at the Olympic Games.

And so here we are with a sport mired in irrelevancy in the overall sporting landscape with only drug use and Jamaica’s Usain Bolt holding Q Scores of public recognition. But now, in the wake of a successful London Olympics, and on the verge of a World Championships in Moscow, the IAAF has embarked on a social media program to assist in raising athlete profiles via what they call the IAAF Athletes’ Hub. Continue reading →

TIME FOR RUNNING TO GET MEDIA WISE

Mo - Center of Attention in London

Mo Farah – Center of Attention in London

The focus of the British press before, during and after last Sunday’s 33rd Virgin London Marathon was on local Olympic champion Mo Farah’s  half-way-only test run for next year’s full distance debut. Even Tsegay Kebede’s final kilometer win over a faltering Emmanuel Mutai was couched in the context Farah ’s first half presence.

Was this what race officials hoped when they signed Farah after recruiting “the greatest marathon field in history”? Or was it simply an indication that today’s version of such a field is incapable of holding public attention on its own?

Whichever, when a local show pony like Mo Farah who had no intention of completing the race dominates race news coverage, which he did, it’s a clear indication that running has a problem that fast times alone cannot solve. What London 2013 revealed was the continuing lack of connection between an audience and the current crop of the world’s top distance runners. And one wonders whether the sport either notices or cares.

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RUNNING COMMUNITIES GATHER IN SOLIDARITY WITH BOSTON

KENMORE SQUARE

KENMORE SQUARE

Boston, MA. — The late blooming warmth of a New England spring morning in Kenmore Square is mocked by the desolate pall that hangs over Boylston Street just one mile east on this second day after the marathon bombings in Boston. With police and FBI officials still pouring over the thousands of photographs and hours of video that were shot along the finish line stretch on Monday, the who, the why and the wherefore of the cruelty remain painfully elusive even as the agonizing consequences continue to radiate to all corners of the city and the nation.

(LATE BREAKING NEWS AT 1:40 p.m. EASTERN TIME: ACCORDING TO WBZ-TV VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS, AN ARREST IN THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING IS IMMINENT!)

Last evening in the close-knit Boston community of Dorchester hundreds of neighbors gathered on a grassy ball field to hold a candle-light vigil for eight year-old Richard Martin, youngest victim in Monday’s tragedy, even as Richard’s mom and sister remain hospitalized with severe injuries. And though it remained blocked as an ongoing crime scene, Boylston Street itself has been turned into a makeshift shrine as these locations of loss so often are.
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WESLEY KORIR – MAN ON THE RUN

 “No man working 40-hours a week will ever beat me in a marathon.”  – Four-time Boston Marathon champion Bill Rodgers.

After winning the 1975 Boston Marathon in an American record 2:09:55 Bill Rodgers gave up his career as a special education teacher to concentrate full-time on training and racing.  But it was only after the principal of his school asked if it was really necessary for Bill to train during his lunch break every day — while changing down in the boiler room — that he made his fateful decision.

Today, the depth of distance running talent is far, far greater than in Rodger’s era, and to say the world’s top runners live an all but monastic existence in preparation for their major competitions is being generous to the monks of this world.  And yet, defending Boston Marathon champion Wesley Korir of Kenya has recently taken on a responsibility that would leave the affable Mr. Rodgers shaking his head in disbelief. Continue reading →

HOYTS HONORED IN HOPKINTON

Hoyt's honored with statue

Hoyt’s honored with statue

Boston Marathon principal sponsor John Hancock Financial this morning unveiled a sculpture of Rick and Dick Hoyt in front of Center School in Hopkinton, Massachusetts near the start line of the world famous marathon. The life-sized statue was commissioned by John Hancock and sculpted by Texas artist Mike Tabor.

The piece is titled, “YES YOU CAN!” and represents Team Hoyt’s goal of helping those who are physically disabled become active members of the community.  Next Monday April 15th the Hoyts will compete in their 31st Boston Marathon.

These days the Hoyts have a world-wide following, and are an inspiration to countless thousands.  But I can remember when the Hoyts got started racing.  Back then it was a personal matter, two people with shared DNA and a common love for a sport.  They weren’t thinking of what their passion for running might exemplify or represent beyond themselves.  That’s the best kind of inspiration, the unintended kind.

In the late 1970s the WACKY 102 Five-Mile Road Race in Springfield, Massachusetts offered a television set as its first-place prize. That TV and the promise of a good time — in the race and after — was enough to draw athletes like Greg Meyer, Randy Thomas, and Bobby Hodge.  Even 1976 10,000 meter Olympian Garry Bjorklund was on hand from Minnesota.

The first mile was a gentle downhill, as I recall, and as I hit the split in just under 5:00 I remember coming up on a man pushing a younger man in a wheelchair.  My first thought was, “damn, that guy is fast”, rather than “isn’t that an inspiration.”  Needless to say, it was Dick and Rick Hoyt just being part of the New England road racing scene, before fame came calling.

But we have to also remember that not very long before that race and those good times the idea of a boy with cerebral palsy joining in a mainstream anything was unheard of, and certainly unseen.  I know. Continue reading →

ADHD DIAGNOSES & DRUG TREATMENTS RISE ON PARALLEL COURSE

Run Them, Then School Them!

Run Them, Then School Them!

Though the New York Times article, A.D.H.D. Seen in 11% of U.S. Children as Diagnoses Rise, was dated March 31, 2013, after reading it one would have hoped the story would have been published on April 1st instead.  That way we could have supposed the information was part of an elaborate April Fools prank.  Unfortunately, not the case.

As the Times reported, new data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) show a staggering 20% of high school age boys and 11% of all school-age children in the U.S. have received a medical diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Historically, only 3% to 7% of children were thought to be affected. Those data alone are disquieting enough, but the realization that the diagnoses have been attended by a corresponding spike in prescription drug use to combat the ADHD problem makes the news even more worrisome. Continue reading →

FLANAGAN & GOUCHER IN FINAL BOSTON TUNE UPS

After London Olympic Marathon 2012

Kara & Shalane after London Olympic Marathon 2012

They battled valiantly to 10th and 11th places at the 2012 Women’s Olympic Marathon in London last summer, finishing just 16-seconds apart.  Last night training mates Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher tuned their racing engines for the April 15th Boston Marathon at the Cardinal Invitational in Palo Alto, California.

Racing over 10,000 meters, Flanagan soloed to an evenly paced 31:04.85 win, ripping off consistent 75-second quarters before capping the night with a 69-second final 400. Kara, exceeding expectations, produced a negative split 31:46.64 to take second place, just missing the World Championship “A” standard 31:45 with a cracking 68-second last lap.

There are 17 days left till Boston.  Marblehead, Mass. native Flanagan will be making her hometown debut, while Ms. Goucher will be starting her third Patriot’s Day 26-miler.  Each hopes to break the U.S. string of futility at Boston marked from Lisa Larsen Weidenbach’s 1985 victory.  It’s understandable having grown up on Boston’s North Shore that Shalane would have proprietary feelings for the race and the area, but Kara isn’t to be discounted in that sphere, either, writing “I have a crush on Boston….”

While training and racing fashions come and go in the insulated world of distance running, in recent times marathoners have been sticking to the half-marathon as their sole prep race for the full distance, even as many East Africans simply forego any tune up race what so ever.  Yet there is precedent for both 10k road and 10,000 track racing (and longer) as a useful Patriot’s Day precursor. Continue reading →

WORLD CROSS COUNTRY – NO MARCH MADNESS

Competition is an examining tool, a measuring stick.  It is an auger to uncover the known from the proposed.  Unfortunately, in the world of distance running the answers are no longer in question; which is one reason why the public has lost interest in the outcome of the sport’s competitions.  What’s to uncover, which anonymous individual from East Africa will be today’s champion?  We already know who is going to win before the starter’s pistol is ever fired.  Which is why if running ever hopes to reengage the public at large, it must find a way to reframe its competitions.

While the U.S. senior men’s team won a hard-earned silver medal at yesterday’s IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland behind Ethiopia’s gold and in front of Kenya’s bronze, given that the Kenyan team was “the weakest in 20 years” according to BBC commentators, the results only underscored their dominance.

World Cross Champion Japhet Korir

World Cross Champion Japhet Korir

Not only did unknown Japhet Korir become the youngest man ever to take the individual men’s gold medal for Kenya, even as the top five places all went to fellow East Africans, the fact that the Kenyan squads — junior and senior, men and women — still won the majority of the day’s other medals over a course which was decidedly not African friendly, testified to the lack of competition offered by the rest of the world.

In fact, many of the old-world cross country powers no longer even sent teams to compete. Germany, Norway, Russia, and France all remained at home rather than make the short trip to neighboring Poland.  When its own member federations lose interest, how exactly does the IAAF propose to woo sponsors and attract sports fans? Continue reading →

OLD FRIEND TEACHING ME NEW WAYS

Larry Rosenblatt in Boston 2011

Larry Rosenblatt in Boston 2011

     I’m a racing purist, clinging to sport as the road to salvation.  Yet even I am susceptible to a good story from the back of the pack.  Last weekend at the Asics L.A. Marathon an old friend from the shoe wars days of the 1970s and `80s ran the L.A. Marathon as the first leg of a four marathons in nine weeks effort to raise funds and awareness for a family back east who lost both its parents during the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. Continue reading →