Last week, I wrote 1,681 words about a marathon—a marathon that was, save for the fact that I eventually crossed the finish line, a complete and utter failure.
It wasn’t any more fun for me to recount it than it was to experience it in the first place, but I promised my editor I’d write something, long before I knew it would go poorly. To more politely paraphrase one individual’s fairly accurate description of the article on Facebook: “It’s just a dude who hurt his knee and got passed by a bunch of ‘inferior’ runners. Boo-hoo.”
Yes, boo-hoo indeed.
But it was that word, “inferior,”—a word I didn’t even really consider much—that turned an otherwise innocuous, harmless narrative into a bigger controversy than I could have ever imagined.
In fact, here’s a look at the brief internal dialogue that went into the decision:
Me: Brain, what’s a word that describes the race participants who jogged past me as I walked at mile 20 and walked past me as I limped at mile 24?
Brain: Google it.
Me: No, c’mon. Give me something for slower or less conditioned; over an hour behind my training pace.
Brain: I’m 1,400 words into an article I didn’t want to write in the first place. Google it.
Google: Inferior – Lower in rank, status or quality.
Me: Cool. That works.
I wrote 1,680 other words about a marathon but, for a staggering number of social media followers, that one word erased the rest.
Five hours after I left my corral, I expected to be in an ice bath—not walking towards the finish.
Commenters have since made sweeping judgments about who I am and how I perceive other runners, which has been surprising to me. Five hours after I left my corral, I expected to be in an ice bath—not walking towards the finish. Given that expectation, being constantly passed during this unwelcome additional time on the course only compounded my frustration. My intent was merely to briefly illustrate my emotions during that period of the race. Nothing more.
Accomplished marathoner Keith Pierce won the race that day, finishing in less than two and a half hours. Keith is a better runner than me. He is the superior runner. In fact, my brother-in-law and training partner for this race is also faster than me, by about 20 seconds or so a mile. It could be said that my running ability is inferior to his.
But you know what? That doesn’t mean that Keith, or my brother-in-law for that matter, achieved anything more or less than I did when we each crossed the finish line (albeit hours apart).
And, yet, thanks to that one pesky little word, a few particularly woke individuals feel that I am somehow intent on disparaging the efforts of the newcomers and novices of the sport. These individuals are also conveniently ignoring one sort of relevant fact:
I am the novice.