Cottonshirt wrote:
2018 NYC Half Marathon 11 Parker Stinson USA 1:03:44
I have a photo on the wall in my office captioned, "Parker Stinson going for it at CIM 2017"
it shows this young man's bold bid for the win at the California International Marathon at Sacramento last year, a bid that ultimately came unravelled, but I admire a man who tries.
cheers.
Call me crazy, but I admire a man who runs a pace he can actually *hold,* and finishes the damn race in a solid time,...
*not* a man who runs over his head and looks great for 21 out of 26, and then crashes horribly and finishes 6 minutes slower than he should've been.
Parker's race today is probably worth 1:02-flat on a flat course with no wind. That'd be a big step in the right direction, and a *lot* more impressive than the nonsense he did at CIM.
There's nothing 'heroic' about going out at a pace you have no shot to hold. This stupid worship of that kind of crap is one of the things holding lots of talented guys back.
Parker seems like a very nice kid, and I wish the best for him, but he's obviously had a long tendency towards this kind of dumbassery, and when guys like you deify him for it, it just reinforces the dumbassery, and *hurts* him.
(I'm not gonna look up the tape right now, but I distinctly remember him doing the same thing at 10K on the track at Outdoor NCAA's a few years back. ('14, maybe?) Went out with Kithuka at sub-28 pace in hot, windy conditions, when he had no shot in hell to hold that pace. If he'd run smart, like Dunbar and Rosa did, he was top 5 for sure. Instead he crashed out and got caught by the whole chase pack.
That's not admirable; it's just dumb.)
When you applaud this kind of dumb-ass racing, you *damage* American distance-running, by encouraging self-destructive behavior.
It's a bad idea. Don't do it.