Today feels like a Friday because I’m taking off tomorrow and heading home to H-town for Labor Day weekend, but there it was this morning, the retardation that is the New York Times Thursday Style Section to remind me of my miscalculation.
Now I realize I don’t yet have the clout or connections to have a column in the Times. But how Gina Kolata acquired her new “Personal Best” column that will run every two weeks about “exercise science and how to improve workouts” is beyond me: it certainly wasn’t based on any discernible writing talent.
Sure, it’s a cliché to bust on a Style article, but the Gray Lady makes it so easy! Okay, Gina, are you telling me that those foolish women who purposely order a filet mignon on a first date to seem easy going are the same women who now “hang back [at road races], often because they are embarrassed to be out there with the men, acting like determined athletes”? Come on, gals, make up your minds - are we feminine or feminists this week? I’m calling a big fat bullshit on this one, ladies.
This article is so insipid I can only imagine it made the “most emailed” list because every runner like me is sending it to her friends with the note, “WTF?” It has all the makings of a bad Style article: she opens with a boring anecdote, launches into some poorly rendered “research,” misappropriates quotations from the president of the New York Road Runners (come ON, Mary, now I KNOW you didn’t say that women are “too inhibited to put their full passion out there”), and she closes with some absurd generalizations about third-wave feminism.
Yes, my particular pedigree of running may qualify me for the Crazy Category but I’d rather be a crazy runner to some than a crazy non-runner to all. Trust me – it’s not a pretty picture when I’m injured, sanity-speaking. Still, I’m not an anomaly and there are plenty of femme fatales just like me in the New York City running community alone. Come visit the running class I coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Ms. Kolata. My group of speedsters is predominantly of the late-twenties to late-thirties feminine variety. Sure, we’ll poke a hole in your theory that older women are more successful in races because they’re trying harder than the younger women, and you might not be able to keep up because we don’t hold anything back and act like determined athletes, but maybe it would be good for your “training.”
The article had a glimmer of potential when the author brought up “the message of some ads and magazine articles telling people to run easy,” and we all KNOW how I feel about those Reebok ads. “A run-easy message is fine if it helps get people started in the sport. But, [Mary Wittenberg] added, there is also a risk, ‘in that it sneers at hard work and pushing to limits.’” Yes, Gina! Focus on this and shut up about the boring results from mom-and-pop 5k races in the suburbs!
I do agree on the “epiphany” point of the article, that an older woman may appreciate her new-found opportunities to run and race more than a younger woman who had opportunities her whole life and might now take them for granted. I may be half the age of someone in my class, but I’ve been running for half of my life where she might have just started. Thanks, Title IX.
Still, the urge to run can strike a woman at any point in her life and the desire to run fast has everything to do with competitive spirit and nothing to do with age.
Want to race, Gina?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment