Quote:
Originally Posted by Alobar
hahaha this. I can't figure out why anyone cares. It must be some evolutionary thing where other people getting undeserved praise hurts your ability to reproduce or something.
well, boston marathon is a specific case. it's (mainly for US runners) a very big deal to run boston . they have specific time cut offs to qualify (sub 3h05 for young guys that you have to run at an "official" marathon in the preceding 18 months) and because that's still not enough to cut down all the applications, the real time you need to run is a few minutes below that (like 3:02 last year). this is very fast. so to say "i ran boston" is signaling "hey, i'm a very serious runner and i am seriously fast". to get to that point, you need to be very commited and most people spend several years of intense training to achieve that. i think it's quite natural to become somewhat angry if someone tries to "fake" that.
now, i am not saying it's a very smart thing to feel like that... but i still understand the emotion.
the other thing is: if people cheat in a qualifying race and get to run boston without "deserving" it, they take away a place from someone that ran sub 3h05 but was still not fast enough to get his place... (according to the guy behind marathon investigator, he estimates that this is the case for >100 people each year; so more than 100 people miss out on being allowed to run boston because someone cheated at a qualifying race and took their place away)
and the last reason: people sometimes cheat in races and get to the (age group) podium and take a podium place (and some small prize money) away from someone that "properly" deserved it. (see
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/sp...lon-cheat.html for example)
now mike rossi is just an incredible idiot. if you don't know the back story:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/...viral-response (i think this was posted here when it happened). and then it came out that he cheated while running boston marathon. that's just retarted.
now i agree completely that everyone should just relax and take it easy. but it's still at least a somewhat understandable reaction imho
ps: boston also has charity runners where you have to collect like 5k+ to get a charity starting bib. so you either have to be fast or pay / collect a lot.