Gabriel Sherman to Marathoners: "Run Faster, Slowpokes!"

If you are a slow marathoner, then this bespectacled man is filled with "mounting dread" (and we all know how painful that can be) by your leisurely pace.

Gabriel Sherman, who isn't shy about informing his readers that he once logged an excellent PR of 2:56 in the New York City Marathon — see his past stories in Running Times and Runner's World — is irked by all the marathon giddiness in the air. More than irked, he's miffed and huffish — to the point of being nettled. Sherman writes in Slate Magazine that:

"The growing army of giddy marathon rookies is so irksome that I'm about ready to retire my racing shoes and pick up bridge. ... In many ways, the slow marathon is the perfect event for the American athletic sensibility. Just finishing a marathon is akin to joining a gym and then putzing around on the stationary bike. We feel good about creating the appearance of accomplishment, yet aren't willing to sacrifice for true gains. It's clear now that anyone can finish a marathon. Maybe it's time we raise our standards to see who can run one."

Here's Sherman's Slate story.

I give the guy credit for picking a fight with the easily annoyed, chip-the-size-of-Rhode Island on their shoulders, 800-lb. gorilla that can be new marathoners. Some probably want to stuff his New Balance trainers down his throat. Sherman rightly points out that there are very real health hazards of going 26.2 miles. And I agree that it's more impressive to commit to your training and really run those miles. Yet I've heard all his arguments before. His whine doesn't add anything meaningful to the debate.

If people are aware of the potential health risks they're taking on with the marathon and are doing their best, then I say it's good to have them off the recliner and on the course. But I've never been big on fraternities or private clubs: It's the old Groucho Marx joke about not wanting to belong to any club that would accept me as a member. It's just too bad that, for Sherman's sake, there isn't a marathon that requires entrants to qualify so he could cruise along unimpeded by the masses of "sluggish newbies" and gleefully set all sorts of new PRs that he could casually drop into his stories later. Wait a minute...

Interesting sidenote: Sherman's petulant elitism probably plays well over at Slate, but I wonder what the editors of Runner's World feel about him taking down the same readers who have fueled that magazine's booming growth in recent years. I wouldn't expect to see another Sherman byline over there any time soon. In fact, the editors' response to his future queries might simply be: "Waddle on, Gabriel!"

Next week in Slate: In an article entitled "Let's Raise the Bar, Weaklings," a 'roid-fueled, unitard-clad power lifter with a squat PR of 10,000 lbs. bemoans the fact that "scrawny little punks like Gabriel Sherman are cluttering up MY YMCA weight room."