I live almost exactly in the solar plexus of the United States. Things arrive late here. We’re still playing the unremixed version of Gotye on the radio, and people still get married and go to church and stuff. Also, marathon decals are making their appearance. This indicates, to me at least, that the marathon craze has finally penetrating the Heartland.
Here’s the website Stuff White People Like which lists marathons at #27 on its eponymous list:
In life, there are certain milestones of physical activity that can define you. A sub 5 second 40 yard dash, a 40 inch vertical leap and so forth. To a white person, the absolute pinnacle of fitness is to run a marathon. Not to win, just to run.
White people will train for months, telling everyone who will listen about how they get up early in the morning, they run when it rains, how it makes them feels so great and gives them energy.
The ability to finish a marathon signals conscientiousness. And marathon stickers – the car decals with 26.2 or 13.1 (losers) on them are symbols of such conscientiousness. Conscientiousness is intertwined chicken-and-egg style with IQ, but posting a quantitative number on your vehicle is uncouth. Putting up a the qualitative decal indicating this milestone is something different. The marathon hits on all of these parameters to create one giant vat of status stew. Hard work, intelligence, economic freedom, and freedom in the spiritual or leisurely sense are all communicated by the singular act of running a lot of miles all in a row.
It’s hard to communicate to people that you’ve run a marathon – that you’ve done something that requires an ascetic devotion, a work ethic, a sacrifice that is an homage to a single historical act that was the opposite of fun. As legend has it, an Athenian soldier, Phiedippides, ran a distance of about 25 miles between Marathon and Athens to tell Athenians that the army had defeated the Persians. He exclaimed victory with a term that has inspired the “Nike” brand (it’s slogan “Just Do It” is conscientiousness), and reportedly died. But the modern 26.2 number stuck for logistical reasons having to do with the Olympics and the location of the British Royal Family during the 1908 Olympic Games. Some invisible hand capitalized on this historical event, and, of course, the Olympic celebration of it, in typical fashion. You take something that is difficult and time-consuming, give out some t-shirts, get some sponsors, charge a fee, give a carrot in the form of social status, get people talking about their marathoning at dinner parties and such, and infuse some talk about health benefits and lifestyle values, and voila.
The marathon indicates a sticktoitiveness that most people don’t have, for a variety of reasons. But you can’t do like Paul Ryan and just talk about your marathon running as if people care. Alright, you can talk about it, but then you’ll be that guy, and you don’t want to be that guy. Some who really want to advertise their conscientiousness – and, importantly, their freedom, economic or otherwise – slap the decals on their Priuses or, if they have young children, their Honda Odysseys. The marathon is only worth it if people know you did it.
There’s something else about marathons that have caused SWPLs to embrace them. They’re co-ed. Men and women alike participate in marathons. Running a 6 hour marathon is just as impressive (I guess) as running a 4 hour marathon. As SWPL argues – and quite correctly, I believe – the importance of the marathon is the fact that the person slugged through the thing. So it fits the liberal ethos (which your more socialistic-minded Christians might also embrace) that opposes competition. And it isn’t inherently masculine, despite the physical exertion and despite the fact that a man was chosen to make the original fun run. It’s about the only physical endeavor that is somewhat impressive and that women can pretty much compete with men on, qualitatively. To say it another way – the concept of the marathon is still so exclusive that everyone who runs a marathon is held in the same regard. The goal is the important part of the marathon, and it is both inclusive and exclusive. Anyone of any race or either gender can do it. We can all run. But few will actually do it. It is safe for those of the SWPL mindset.
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Anyone of any race or sex can run a marathon… except mesomorphs and endomorphs. It’s a slight-framed person’s endeavor, slim bodies and thin frames describing many SWPLs.
Smokers, big muscles, and hefty people won’t finish the race.
Training for and running in a marathon is just another sign of SWPL dementia and the harsh emptiness of their status-obsessed lives. Everyone I’ve ever known who is a “runner” had something a little twisted about them.
But thank you for letting me know what those stickers mean, as they seem to be popping up a lot lately and I had no idea what they meant. I suppose they are the new “Baby on Board” sign. Except who would be such an uncouth breeder these days to advertise they actually had a baby.
Wisdom for the ages – “Stand by the finish line of a marathon and find me one man whose physique you admire”
I know someone who just finished a marathon last week. I was impressed by it, she trained all the time for two years.
Nice post. Runners “slugged through the thing”, so true. The broadcasting of the completed marathon is lame status seeking and signaling. It’s another ‘superiority’ substitute for old school morality. In a country that is 70% overweight and obese, I do tip my hat to people who train and complete one. The schedules are pretty grueling, and I’d never do it, but I do know a handful of people who wanted to run a marathon to check of a life goal. It’s like climbing a mountain for them, but without the danger.
Good call on mocking the 13.1 stickers. Those cars should be rear ended.
Don’t mock marathons altogether though as it virtually assures the person who finishes is not a fat ass…..which is about the worst thing you can be.
Dan in DC
Ugh … this status signaling and the whole “The marathon is only worth it if people know you did it.” smacks of the contemporary trend in business office feedback politicking which is to announce to the entire world what you did and your accomplishments, being pushy about it sometimes, taking credit your (and for others people’s) work and generally being a walking in-your-face smug advertisement. The more you eschew it, the more you endanger your career (especially with offshoring looming). The more you embrace it, the more qualities of “that guy” you become. So it becomes less about performing the work and more about the perception of having done the work and the amount of success one can blather on about. Which goes to the heart of what you’re saying about the marathon. As an aside, I feel sympathy for non-customer facing jobs, they’re mostly filled with people who’s career strategy is back-end since they don’t want to hack a customer-facing role, a risky strategy since you need to be even more in demand than a customer facing one to survive, given that the only people that can vouch for you, are in direct competition with you. At least with a customer, you got the customer as a voucher fallback.
“So it becomes less about performing the work and more about the perception of having done the work and the amount of success one can blather on about.”
This is a very precise description of the work environment at Microsoft, that happy land of SWPL managers and marketers working in a sea of Chinese and Indian engineers.
I’ve played soccer and basketball my entire life, and even as the grays start appearing on my temples, I’m still happy to run and run and run for the purpose of getting a spherical object into a net.
But never for the life of me have I felt compelled to run and run and run just for the sake of it, and the marathon has always struck me as one of the most unappealing endeavors conceived by humans. It does seem like a kind of dementia, as peterike says above.
Not to mention, people who do a lot of long-distance running tend to start looking scraggy and even sickly. It’s not an appealing look, especially for men.
But OK, I guess there’s the runner’s high and all that.
A few points to consider:
1. Training eats up a lot of TV Time, which is good.
2. People of any economic niche can do it, unlike ski trips to Vale, polo, etc.
3. Other than the ubiquitous 2 or 3 Kenyans who show up, it is largely minority-free.
4. I’ve known multiple “heavy” people who have become healthy and fir from running.
5. There are beer tents at the end of every race
I would argue the 13.1/26.2 stickers are more about a shared experience (ie other runners), than bragging to people who don’t run.
Runners may seem like a mysterious group of people from the outside, which likely leads to the opinion that its just some sort of SWPL bragging platform, but if you go out and train for a shorter race, like a 5K (I recommend the “Couch Potato to 5K program), you’ll quickly find out differently.
While the top runners are very slim (and the good ones tend to slim as well) , I’ve seen fat people and muscular guys finish marathons all the time (fat people usually around 5+ hours and the muscular guys can be faster than average*). However, I’d wager that marathoners are on average more likely to be ectomorphs, but I don’t know the exact breakdown.
On another note, I don’t see what’s so bad about status signalling. Sure it can be annoying, but almost everyone does it, it’s just that different groups have different markers and values.
*I once saw a Marine run in combat boots carrying an American flag. I think he finished around 3:30, which is a great time considering his self-imposed handicaps.
I ran one in high school, being a track/ cross country runner and wrestler and in fantastic condition.
Some incredible things happen during a marathon. At about mile-10, I was in a small pack with about seven adult men, and without any overt communication we formed a wedge sort of like migratory birds to cut through a fairly strong headwind. Every minute or so the runner on point dropped back to the end, letting his next-in-line cut the air resistance for the others.
I was on pace to finish under 3:00 hrs., a very respectable time for a teenage amateur. But at mile 20 I hit The Wall, which is a point when your carb-based energy is depleted and you’re basically out of fuel. Your body then eats your protein, which I likened to a car sucking on engine oil for combustion when gasoline runs out. The last six miles were sheer hell but I made it in.
I respect what the marathoners can achieve athletically and dedication-wise, but 26.2 miles is too far to run for those who don’t want to look deadly skinny.
I would guess that 3 miles is about the max distance you’d want to run regularly before starting to risk the ability to maintain/build upper body muscle. I wonder if there’s scientific research on this.
*I once saw a Marine run in combat boots carrying an American flag. I think he finished around 3:30, which is a great time considering his self-imposed handicaps.”
I’d say so, that’s an 8-minute mile pace. If you can run an 8-minute mile pace for 5 miles you’re in pretty good shape, let alone doing it for 26.2 miles.
PA,
Big muscle people will finish the race, as long as it isn’t some steroid induced Mr. Universe type. Fat people and smokers won’t. But isn’t that the point?
Broadhead,
If your born with a small frame its not like you are going to put on that much muscle anyway. Speed has always been the way such people compete to survive.
SOBL1,
“In a country that is 70% overweight and obese, I do tip my hat to people who train and complete one.”
Then why spend the whole first half of your post hating on people who do it.
All,
I think we need to be clear why we don’t like SWPLs. It certainly isn’t because they have no virtues. Your average SWPL has lots of virtues, or at least understands how important virtue is. I’d rather have someone that has the discipline to run a marathon then someone who hates on it from the couch.
The reason we don’t like SWPLs is because they are self absorbed. They are all about themselves. When they are acting like they care about others is when they are their most self absorbed. They worship themselves. There is nothing surprising about people worshiping themselves building themselves up through things like marathons. It makes sense. It’s the narcissism stupid.
Narcissist are assholes. We could go into every different way they are assholes but what is the point. It’s been rehashed again and again. The reason you don’t like those stickers is because they are giant “I’m a narcissist” stickers on the back of ones car.
Pride is a sin. The first sin. The ultimate sin. All other sins come from it. SWPLs are brimming with pride. That’s the problem. When they complete a noble ascetic task like a marathon it is done not in service of something higher, but in the service of their own petty pride.
In short SWPLs commit the spiritual sin of pride. Spiritual sins are the highest sins. They are more dangerous then the earthly temptations (physical pleasures, which SWPLs do resist). Pride poisons any good action one takes. It twists it into something unholy. The story of Satan’s fall is the story of spiritual sin, of pride. He falls not because he wants pleasure (he is already in heaven) but because he wants to be highest, above God. Satan is happy to grant one strength against the lesser sins that the proles fall victim to so long as it is in service of the greater spiritual sins. Sin from earthly desire has its limit, far greater evil can be done through spiritual sin.
Nearly all of modern leftism is a post-Christian spiritual heresy with pride at the center. Every SWPL is trying to be “holier then thou” not out of service to God, but out of their own pride. The marathon is simply a sacrament in the twisted faith that puts themselves at the center.
I actually had some 0.0 stickers made and handed them out to my friends.
Good job, PA! PT is important for WNs. The military tends to specialize in 2 mile runs. I don’t see much profit in doing more than 5 mile runs for our purposes.
@asdf – I top my hat to those who run, but I dislike the broadcasting of it. It’s like straights who support gay marriage vs. straights who support gay marriage and have to tell everyone about it all of the time.
I actually know quite a few people into the whole marathon thing. And you’re absolutely right about the important thing being telling people about it. Not all of the marathon people put the stickers on their cars. There is a definite personality difference between the ones that don’t and the ones that do.
I think it just says something that they designed the stickers to look the way they do. They’re obviously copying those European stickers with the three-letter country code. Why they did that, I don’t know. White ovals with ugly fonts must just give off that aura of sophistication that a cool-looking sticker wouldn’t.
asdf:
I don’t think most people hate SWPLs because of their pride. They hate them because the SWPLs dislike them, and when given a chance, act in ways detrimental to their interests.
“I think we need to be clear why we don’t like SWPLs. It certainly isn’t because they have no virtues. Your average SWPL has lots of virtues, or at least understands how important virtue is.”
Oh they have tons of virtues. In fact, living in an SWPL neighborhood is terrific on many, many fronts.
My problem with them is two-fold.
1 – They are political idiots. Totally hypnotized by Liberalism, they vote for people and policies that seek their destruction and/or enslavement. Yet they don’t realize this. Nearly everything SWPLs love about their lifestyles is made possible by the seed corn of American nationalism and limited government that is just about all eaten up. The coming collapse will baffle them.
2 – Their multi-culturalism and insane fetishizing of non-whites and non-white cultures. In this, SWPLs are my enemy. They are also suicidal in this regard, but we all know that.
I don’t really care about their relentless status whoring, and I quite like SWPL things like local boutique farming, high quality craft items created by small entrepreneurs and SWPLs enormous support for these kinds of things. I like their anti-corporatism very much. The problem is they can’t grasp that giant government is a thousand times worse than giant corporations. If we could only get them to see the Feds as a gigantic Exxon-Mobil or Halliburton.
peterike,
Politics is about signaling. SWPLs are narcissists. They care about themselves. They espouse political beliefs they believe will raise them up, primarily via status signaling. Collateral damage? Long term societal effects? Who cares.
Look, no one voter is dictator. Your vote doesn’t matter. If you were president it still wouldn’t matter because if you did something people didn’t like they would vote you out. So voting isn’t about policies. It’s about signaling. And SWPLs understand signaling very very well. They understand what helps them in this life. They are not acting irrationally. They are acting hyper rationally based on self selected starting axioms out of pride. They are the ultimate self-actualizers. Which is just another way of saying they want to substitute their own subjective “reality” for God’s objective reality. The “error” is in the starting axioms, not the logical outflow of those axioms. Their actions and beliefs, however deplorable you find them, are the natural result of the starting point they have chosen.
hahaha,
here’s a run for you….
http://www.baretobreakers.com/
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I quit running triathlons and the like for exactly the reason you stated in your last paragraph. I got zero satisfaction from coming in 500 out of 1000th place, and fat chicks plodding past me, when I know I’m 10x the athlete they are. I went to Olympic weightlifting where I had a shot at first and there’s far less people that do it because it really is too damn hard.
Advance planning, long term time commitment, physical pain… could it be a child substitute for the girls?
I once fucked a girl four hours straight without shooting. That’s the only kind of signaling penetration that matters, so the spindly SWPL suckups can have their marathons and equality stickers.
The military’s 2 mile run is an actual run. I wouldn’t recommend doing that pace for 5 miles on a regular basis past a certain age. Marathons are jogs, although at a brisk pace, at about 6mph to finish in ~4h.
The shorter run, even wind sprints are better athletic training than jogging. I used to jog a lot for the runner’s high I guess, about 5 miles a day and I wouldn’t recommend it. A 2-3 mile jog is good enough exercise 3-5 days a week. The military 2 mile run in <16 minutes seems like overkill.
“Marathons are jogs”
The actual speed is relative to one’s cardiovascular ability of course. Jogging means you can have a conversation while running. An elite marathon runner will sustain this at 5:30 min/mile pace. A normal fit person at 8min./mile in a 26-mile race.
A 2 to 6 mile run for any conditioned but non-competitive runner is faster than a jog: it’s a run, but not a sprint. You stay aerobic but there is no oxygen to spare for anything other than running – can’t talk at that point.
A sprint is when you go into aerobic debt: you can’t breathe and process oxygen fast enough to metabolize glucose into energy as required by your arm and leg speed, so your body goes anaerobic. This is why your your whole body feels like it’s burning after a sprint.
I don’t run marathons because it seems rather excessive. I would like to give a triathlon a shot. I’m just one of those people built for cardio. I run five miles up and down hills three times a week no problem. Hell, I do my runs before breakfast and I’m a cigar smoker to boot.
I lift weights three times a week, it’s a freaking struggle to get through the hour with weight amounts most of you would find laughable. It’s just the way my body is built.
I’m a cigar smoker to boot.
Me too, but I do the Bill Clinton and don’t inhale down to the lungs so my wind is not affected.
“A normal fit person at 8min./mile in a 26-mile race.”
I consider myself a normal, fit person and there is no way I could do that. That sounds like a person in excellent shape.
That pace assumes a youngish person who has trained for at least six months. Most untrained people, even if in good shape and young, would never be able to finish a marathon.
Except sometimes marathoners die, or at least blow out their heels, knees, & hips. All with little to no positive affect on health. I prefer to lift weights then go out and run 100-yard uphill windsprints.
There is one thing that the marathon culture illustrates perfectly is that there is just a massive amount of potential energy among SWPLs that is not going to anything related to survival or upholding civilization. Maybe it is premature to talk about the extinction of European people when they aren’t even trying very hard at the whole civilization game.
Presumably if someone tried to invade or enslave or something, these SWPLs would stop running back and forth and start doing something useful.
You want real endurance, how about the sport of pedestrianism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Barclay_Allardice
The big challenge was to walk 1 mile in hour, every hour for 1000 consecutive hours.
Are you all kidding?
Get out of your idiotic brains for a minute and realize that fat people sure do finish. Last, but it’s not some exclusive event for fit people. Realize that runners physiques are nasty- show me one runner that finishes in under five hours that you’d bang. None.
Most importantly, being able to run 26 miles is a sign of embarrassment, not a sign of coolness. I pity those assholes and Fugly bitches. Climb a mountain. Ride a bike. Lift some heavy shit and put or back down. Do some pull ups. Bang your girlfriend. Get a fucking life.
No one runs a 6 hr marthaton, that’s walking a marathon.
Btw my 2011 New York Marathon time 3:11:48
*pats back*
WSJ, 11/27/12. New Studies on Older Endurance Athletes Suggest the Fittest Reap Few Health Benefits…Running can take a toll on the heart that essentially eliminates the benefits of exercise…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323330604578145462264024472.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
@PA – no sir, Oprah ran a marathon and yes you will find hefty people running and completing marathons but most finish over 4hrs.
Btw, there was a hefty NFL player who completed a few Hawaii Ironman competitions. Now you think a marathon is tuff,try completing it after having swam 5miles and biked 100 miles on the same day. The Ironman takes a lot of mental strength. I suspect a person who does well at the Hawaii Ironman would do well on the Navy Seals test.
Agree with the other commenter about status signaling and bragging. It’s just something that human beings like to do. I’ll tell you what status signaling i hate too many “i’m a tuff guy” when a man with a nice body is covered in tattoos. It’s like taking a sharpie to a Picasso.
There’s this show on Showtime called “Gigolos” and one of the guys has this big nasty tattoo on his arm that looks like some type of bad rash or weird reaction.
Oh I forgot, P. Ditty completed the marathon in about 4:14. I think every healthy person should be able to run a 5k. It should be a mark of national pride that we would all be so fit.
About this upcoming race war… I bet that storms and other environmental damage will erase Europeans before a race war. I can’t believe you all really believe this stuff. I think some people ESP men just have a blood lust for murder,violence, and destruction. It’s a darn shame we can’t stop those people from breeding.
Running a marathon isn’t a exclusively a SWPL thing, but it definitely fits with the ethos.
In my parts(southern illinois), distance running was almost kind of a conservative christian thing.
I went to state in both cross country and track(800m and the mile). I personally find distance running unmasculine now and would try to steer my future male children away from it… or have then focus exclusively on the 800m and if anything move down to the 400m before the mile. That being said, In my experience girls who do run distance races to tend to stay away from the “bad boys”.
How is marathon running any different from trying to bench press 300 lbs? Both take dedication. Isn’t a SWPL bragging about his marathon time the same as a meathead bragging about his lifts?
Also, the triathletes I’ve seen generally seem to have better all-round fitness than runners.
Don’t forget the “Let’s get HEALTHY” angle for runners. That seems to be the selling point for people that always try to get me to enter one.
My answer?
Don’t you folks know where the word Marathon comes from?
Dude ran from Marathon to Athens non-stop to deliver the news of victory over the Persians. He arrived at the assembly, declared “WE WON!”, then DROPPED DEAD.
That’s not my idea of “getting healthy.”
People here are saying that marathon runners don’t look attractive or healthy. Is this guy unhealthy looking? Nobody runs more than him, I would say.
http://www.ultramarathonman.com/web/
My guess from knowing other runners is that they don’t have a proper diet. You can’t be vegetarian or have the average SWPL diet if you’re running a lot. Or paleo for that matter. You need both carbs and fats. The guy above said he looks forward to running since he can eat a sausage pizza.
Voice of Reason:
That’s been my anecdotal experience as well, though triathlons are less SWPL and more of the hardcore exercise uber alles types who don’t give a shit about anything other than competing and pushing their limits.
As a sport the marathon sure doesn’t have a monopoly on insufferable participants.
But the things that gets me is that marathons and other races have been commercialized into Events rather than just races for the benefit of the casual runner rather than the athlete. As a somewhat competitive runner I like the competitive side of races & competing frequently compels me to improve at the sport. In the last few years I’ve seen the price of races go up a lot to pay for things like technical tee shirts and the post race convention/party.
Half Sigma has a long-running (heheh) shtick on people who croak while running marathons.
I’m definitely among the “marathon is like climbing a mountain” people who took on the challenge because “it was there”. Not having good enough eyesight to ever get good at one of the more fun sports (such as baseball, which I’d give anything to be able to play really well), it was either do track and field or not be a varsity athlete, and for a high school boy, if you’re not an athlete, you’re nobody. When I got to the marathon in college I managed to nearly finish in the top 20 for my age group, which is something I’ll never forget. So I’ve got a soft spot for marathoners.
And when you’re running 4-5 days a week, you can eat whatever you want and never get fat!
Tangential observation 1: Bumper stickers? That you stick on your *automobile*? Wouldn’t a true assertion of fitness and athleticism be to not own an automobile and to get everywhere using your own power?
Tangential observation 2: Is loving imperial measurement over metric a sign of SWPL-dom? Do they not produce “42.195″ stickers, or even “42.2″?
Tarl,
That’s classic.
http://www.bataanmarch.com/
http://www.ironman.com/#axzz2Dcz15HKi
I’ve run marathons, but my kids have trumped me with the above.
…….and in the spirit of shameless bragging, my son’s team finished second overall in the BataanMarathon 2011 above.
I ran cross country many years ago and did a marathon at the age of 17. In more recent years I only do small amounts of medium-slow running and focus my workouts on lifting heavy weights. My biggest takeaway was this: during and after a long run I would always feel numb and brain-dead, and the sense of accomplishment I got would be based on having slogged through something tedious and wearying. I had a scrawny physique and felt vaguely tired a lot of the time. Meanwhile, intense weightlifting for just 20-30 minutes gives me an incredible mental rush and the glorious soreness of having conquered an enemy on the battlefield. I’ve been able to fill out and put on weight while remaining flat-bellied, and I literally walk around with an urge to put my fist through a wall (not from anger, just pent-up aggression).
Lifting > Running
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