Why the marathon is not for me

"Are you training for a marathon?"

I get asked that question a lot by people who find out that I like to run. It's a totally understandable question, given the prominence that the marathon has assumed as the presumptive "event" for recreational runners. And yet, I have pretty much zero interest in running one. To be sure, I say that with absolutely no intention of downplaying the accomplishment of those who train for and run (or try to run) one. If that's what gets someone motivated to run, that's great. It's just not for me.

My 2014 race results

Excuse my shameless self-promotion here, but after all, this is my blog!

RECAP OF MY YEAR IN RACING (2014)

Total races: 14 (plus one untimed zombie run).

- 1 mile: one
- 5K: nine
- 10K: three
- half: one

Size of races:

- largest: 353 (halloween-themed 5K)
- smallest: 35 (fundraising 5K)

Top 10% finishes:13/14

- The one miss was #16 out of 154, so if I'd finished one spot higher, I would've nailed this category.


Age Group Finishes:

- #1 finishes: nine [3 of these were overall #1 masters finishes]
- #2 finishes: one
- #3 finishes: four

(Quite pleased that I finished first, second, or third in my age group in every race this year.)

PRs:

- 10K: 44:22 (by 16 seconds)

Now I kind of know how Tantalus felt

In Greek mythology, Tantalus was the guy who was punished in the underworld by having to stand in water below a fruit tree, all the while feeling terrible hunger and thirst. Yet, when he reached for the fruit or bent down for the water, each would move out of his reach. It's the image of eternal temptation that can never be satiated.

Now I kind of know how he felt. Not the eternal part, of course. But I just got back from a trip to SoCal, and we were staying in Anaheim. Not too far from Disneyland, in fact, though we didn't go into the parks. We did, however, spend part of one blazing hot afternoon at Downtown Disney.

This happened to be right before the Labor Day Weekend, which happens to be the weekend for a bunch of Disneyland road races.

Therefore, driving to the parking lot required driving right under the start line of the 5K race, and at Downtown Disney, there were lots and lots of people were wearing race shirts from previous Disneyland races. I saw "Goofy Challenge," "Dopey Challenge," "Double Dare," and "Run Disney" shirts, among others. All of it reminded me that I have yet to run a Disney race....

What was even more irksome about all of this is that the 5K was on Friday morning. Our flight home was on Friday afternoon, so I easily could've run the race on our schedule. I just wasn't paying attention and didn't realize that we'd be in town for the 5K. (The longer races are over the rest of the long weekend.)

Oh well, it had probably sold out before we finalized our plans. Right????

Is it wrong to use watermarked race photos?

Runner's World has a column by Mark Remy about the propriety of using watermarked race photos without having paid for them, which turns out to be convenient timing for me because I received an email today from the photography company at the not-quite-5K race I ran this past weekend. Not that I've ever copied watermarked photos. (I suppose it helps to avoid being tempted when I don't look so good in most race photos . . . .)

Here's the gist of Remy's (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) argument:

As I mentioned earlier, I have shared a few of these PROOF photos on my own Facebook page. I have also purchased the full-size versions from time to time. But never – not once – have I seen a race photo that I loved, that I really wanted, and thought to myself, You know what? That's a great photo, but instead of paying for a nice, big, clean version, I think I'll save 30 bucks by grabbing this tiny, pathetic version that's plastered with watermarks.

In the lengthy comments section, Remy and others debate whether this is like illegal downloading/file sharing of MP3 music files. It seems to me the "hey, the photographer hasn't lost anything" argument ignores one of the central tenets of intellectual property law, which is the right to exclude others. Whether the copyright infringer has profited from the infringement may be relevant for the purposes of establishing how much the infringer has to pay, as the Copyright Act includes "additional profits of the infringer" as part of that measure.

The more interesting debate in the comments, though, is, "why are race photos so freaking expensive?"

A number of professional photographers chimed in, pointing out that theirs is an art that requires training, experience, equipment, and effort (quickly matching photos to runners), and that the photo prices simply reflect all of those inputs. Numerous runners responded that they would be willing to buy photos (digital or print) if they were cheaper, but not when the photos cost as much or more than the races did.

This comes down to asking whether the photographer makes more money from a low volume/high price approach as compared to a high volume/low price approach. Generally, I would expect that a business has thought about profit maximization issues and concluded that it does better with what it's currently doing, so I can't say that the photography companies must be wrong. (Of course, it often doesn't work out that way - just look at the carcasses of dead and dying companies that didn't realize Amazon.com was going to eat them for lunch.)

Anyway, what seems like a reasonable price to pay for a single race photo? I clicked through the email I got today and was surprised to see that there were a couple of decent-looking pictures of me, and the price for one 5x7 printed and mailed was $13, which seems merely expensive as opposed to outrageous, so I might be ordering it.

Although it seems that if you can wait a month or two after the race, the prices will start to drop, or you get a discount offer....

When 5K races aren't 5K....

Once you start running races, if not even before then, the kilometers to miles conversion gets pretty easy to do in your head. I think it's because the most popular road races are 5Ks and 10Ks,but here in the United States, we still use the English imperial system of measurement, so 5K = 3.11 miles and 10K = 6.21 miles.

I don't have the best kick in the world, but sometime before those last 0.11 miles in a 5K, I like to go all out and empty the fuel tank. That leaves me dependent on either having a reasonably accurately measured race course, or knowing in advance that the course is going to be a non-standard distance.

For some reason, I've had a string of races lately that have been off. There was a 10K in March that checked in at 6.43 miles, a 5K in April that came out to 3.18 miles, and then most recently, a 5K that fell short at 2.93 miles. Now it's possible that the GPS on my smartphone was slightly off, as even GPS watches aren't perfect, but I'm inclined to think that the errors in those races were the actual distances, not my phone, because the race times I turned in (and in some cases, those of other racers that I talked to) were consistent with the courses having been mismeasured.

Assuming that my smartphone GPS was accurate, we're talking about mismeasured course distances of 3.5%, 2.3%, and 5.8(!)%. Those seem like pretty significant inaccuracies. The last one was the strangest one of all, as there was a short out-and-back segment in the middle of the race, where it seems like it would have been trivially easy to tack on an extra 0.09 miles to make the distance right.

Now, I'm not an elite runner, and these aren't qualifying races for any bucket-type events, so in the long run, it's not a big deal. But I found the last race in particular a bit annoying because I was pacing myself based on the expected distance, and the end of the race was hidden around a corner, so I basically finished with a very short kick, not to mention a sub-20:00 "5K" time - a goal that I'm chasing right now - that isn't real. I was comped this race, so I can't really complain, but if I'd paid the entry fee, I think I'd be a bit more annoyed - although I guess it would mean that if the organizers use the same route next year and I run it again, I'll be prepared to speed up at 2.7 miles instead of 2.9.

Lauren Fleshman was too nice to put a smug marathoner in his place

The quite funny and very down-to-earth Lauren Fleshman has a column in this month's Runner's World about why the 5K is an "awesome" race. (Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be available online.) Among other things, it doesn't involve soul-draining 3 1/2 hour long runs on the weekends, and you're able to walk normally the next day.

But the story starts with an anecdote that illustrates a common perception that the marathon is the pinnacle running event, while the 5K is for beginners. Fleshman recounts a flight she took where she started chatting with the guy sitting next to her, who she'd deduced was a runner based on the shoes he was wearing. Impressed by her extensive knowledge of running, he asked her if she also ran marathons, to which she replied that she had once but ran mostly 5Ks. The guy's response was, "Keep trying, you'll get there."

Fleshman is a pro runner with a 5K PR of 14:58. (Her marathon PR is 2:37.) Wherever there is, she's gone WAY past it already.

Anyway, she writes about how she wanted to discuss how hard it was in a recent international competition when everyone started out at a 4:50 pace in the first mile . . . but was too tired to make the case and had to deal with a mess her baby had just made.

Or it could be that she was too nice to say anything like that.

As I read the column, I found myself wondering, apart from my lack of desire to run a marathon, whether I would've fallen into some kind of equivalent mistake as Fleshman's seatmate did - which is to say, to assume some greater degree of athletic accomplishment when actually sitting next to a pro runner (or even just an elite one).

I'm pretty sure that my conversation would have diverged at the point where she said she ran mostly 5Ks, whereupon I would've asked, "What's your PR?"

14:58 would've definitely let me know that I was sitting next to a running goddess, not some novice runner.

So, yeah, don't go assuming that a 5K runner needs to keep trying to "get there."

UPDATE (5/30): The article by Fleshman is available online now.