Running news roundup

A lot has been happening in the world of endurance sports, and since this is my blog, I would like to offer my take on some of the top headlines of late. If I were writing for a respected news outlet, I would be required to mention that this piece does not necessarily reflect the opinions of this organization, its sponsors or its affiliates. But let’s be real—this blog never has been, nor ever will be, a respected news outlet. And it definitely doesn’t have any sponsors or affiliates. So, I think I’m safe in that regard. Also, I would like to point out that I realize I have missed the window of timeliness on some of these items, especially by journalistic standards. Again, this blog is not a respected news outlet, so those rules do not apply. (Sorry, Mom and Dad—that journalism degree will come in handy at some point. I promise am fairly confident.)

A different kind of paid appearance: the Suzy Favor-Hamilton debacle

Look, I’ve seen Pretty Woman. I know there are a lot of Vivian Wards out there just waiting for their own Edward Lewis to whisk them away from a world of blonde wigs and cheap platform shoes in a white stretch limousine.

Suzy Favor-Hamilton is not Vivian Ward. She’s not the charmingly unrefined “hooker with a heart of gold” who dreams of a better life. She’s an Olympian with a successful real estate business, a $600,000 home and a loving husband and daughter.

A former world-class athlete voluntarily “going the distance” with the rich sleazeballs who frequent the high-roller tables at the glitziest casinos in Vegas? That’s not charming. It’s gross. And a little bit sad.

I’ve heard a lot of stories about has-been athletes unraveling in the wake of their inevitable retirement from professional sports. Ryan Leaf. Dennis Rodman. O.J. Simpson.

Those guys did some pretty terrible things, but as a former middle distance runner, I was genuinely rocked by Suzy’s admission. It’s usually male athletes who fall from grace after being “caught with their pants down” in the midst of some kind of crime or scandal. Suzy’s exposure was both more literal and more surprising.

As shocked and disappointed as I was when I first heard about this story, I found myself slowly drumming up some sympathy for poor Suzy. Why? Because something she said resonated with me: she missed the thrill of competition, and her double-life as a high priced call girl somehow filled that void.

Why she didn’t try filling that void with skydiving, base jumping, drinking tap water in Mexico or some other similarly-risky-but-less-morally-questionable behavior is beyond me. I miss the thrill of competition too, but I get my adrenaline fix by singing terrible country karaoke in bars full of drunk strangers. (If only Suzy and I had connected before this whole thing blew up—it all could have been avoided with a simple duet version of “Strawberry Wine” by Deana Carter!)

Also, for any other Olympic runners out there who are interested in leading secret lives as Vegas escorts, here’s a golden drop of advice: you might want to keep the whole Olympic runner thing under wraps. No matter how rich and successful they become, dudes will never stop bragging to each other about their “conquests”—even if they technically paid for them. Bedding an Olympian? You better believe that one’s gonna come out at next week’s poker night.

Liestrong

Speaking of getting caught with your pants down*, let’s talk about Lying Lance Armstrong.

I am well aware that technically, this story isn’t about running; it’s about running’s rude, less attractive cousin—cycling. But I think it deserves a mention because it centers on an issue that affects all endurance sports, including distance running: blood doping and the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Lance Armstrong’s recent Oprah interview—in which he confessed to using banned substances during his seven-year streak of Tour de France victories—dealt a heavy blow to athletes across the globe with highly disproportionate quads-to-biceps ratios.

I mean, if THE Lance Armstrong—a longtime proponent of sportsmanship who for years vehemently denied gaining any sort of unfair advantage through the use of banned substances—is actually a lying cheat, what does that mean for the rest of us? I feel like I’ve lost all faith in not only the purity of sport, but also in humankind in general.

The benefit of the doubt is dead to me. There is no longer any benefit. Benefit scammed thousands of people out of their life savings in an elaborate Ponzi scheme and then hightailed it to Mexico. Benefit borrowed your Mad Men season 2 DVD box set and then dropped off the face of the planet. Benefit ordered a dozen shots of Patrón on your tab and then slipped out the back door of the bar.

Now there is only doubt. Doubt in the legitimacy of every notable performance in distance racing. Doubt in the moral fortitude of my childhood heroes. Doubt in sportsmanship and the sanctity of honest competition. Of all the times I have been beaten in a race (not that there are very many), how many were true losses? I will never know. It’s not like Oprah is going to demand answers from every person who’s ever won a 5K.

It makes me sick to think of all of the social cause bracelets I have refused to wear out of loyalty to that original yellow silicone band. I politely accepted dozens of imposters—pink for breast cancer awareness, green for cervical cancer awareness, even blue for prostate cancer awareness—only to bury them at the bottom of my junk drawer.

Turns out, the only imposter in this sad situation is the man behind that rubber ring of hope. It’s a good thing Oprah is such a classy lady. If I had been the one sitting across from Lance when he dropped the doping bombshell, I probably would have kicked him in the nut.

Presidential run

Here’s a news item that further corroborates my longstanding theory that Maine is way too close to Canada for its own sanity, and that eventually it probably will just sort of quietly fade into Quebec.

Some crazy dude decided it would be super awesome to run from his home in Maine to the Presidential Inauguration in Washington, D.C. Total distance: 700 miles, or approximately 27 full marathons.

I don’t know about you, but my list of people for whom I would run 27 consecutive marathons is pretty short:

People for Whom I Would Run 27 Consecutive Marathons

1. Pat Sajak (assuming I have a spot as a contestant on Wheel)
2. Prince William (pre-Kate, obviously)
3. Carrot Top (if he was chasing me)

Sorry, crazy Maine guy—clearly my list is way too exclusive for an American president to make the cut.

In fairness, he did raise money for charity through his efforts, so I have to give him props for that. All I’m saying is that next time, maybe he could run to a Bon Jovi concert or something cool like that.


*I’m not really sure if that idiom applies here, but let’s just assume that at some point, Lance pulled down his pants to give himself a steroid shot in the derrière (that’s French for buttocks, since we’re also assuming that said offense occurred in France).

Lap of luxury

Last week, I had the great fortune of staying at a luxury resort on someone else’s dime. What I saved in dollars and cents, however, was negated by what I paid in pride and dignity.

Here’s the thing: different people have different definitions of “luxury.” Some might consider a lobby full of art galleries, designer stores and five-star restaurants to be “luxurious.”

I, on the other hand, feel that “luxury” implies that all possible needs and desires of each customer have been preemptively identified and addressed. This is why they sell $150 golf shirts 10 feet from the front desk; they anticipated the business executive who checks in and immediately realizes that he has forgotten to pack the proper attire for his afternoon “meeting” on the links. This is also why $5 bottles of Evian water have been strategically placed just steps inside of each hotel room; they anticipated that I would be thirsty after hauling all of my crap through the “luxury” lobby and up to the 12^th floor. (Luckily, I anticipated that everything would be marked up 500% at the resort, which is why I brought my own bottle of water.)

So anyway, you would think they would have anticipated that some guests might have reason to make a discreet entrance through a strategically placed side door, thus bypassing all of the ritzy mumbo jumbo going on in the lobby. Maybe they had a late night at the floating bar. Maybe they passed out on the beach and would rather not take a walk of shame past a five-star restaurant with sand in their hair and the faint smell of expensive liquor emanating from their pores.

Or maybe—just maybe—they are returning from a muddy five-mile lap around the park in warm, humid conditions. Maybe they sweated profusely while running said lap, and as a result collected several freshly killed insect specimens on their forehead. Maybe they would rather not walk though a pretentious “luxury” lobby in sweat-drenched clothes, with a gnat graveyard on their face and fresh mud splatters on their legs.

Trust me, I did my best to avoid the inevitable humiliation that comes with sporting a sweat-soaked T-shirt in a room full of rich people. I knew that there had to be an ultra-secret door for ultra-famous celebrities who didn’t want to cause a scene each time they arrived at the hotel.

Plus, there are plenty of celebrities who work out (or at least attempt to). I mean, come on—Oprah ran a marathon for Christ’s sake. Do you think Ms. Winfrey would have to drag herself through the lobby with a sweaty butt and a buggy forehead after going for a jog with her personal training entourage (and Gayle)? I don’t think so.

Oprah would be whisked away through some special entrance as soon as she arrived, and no one would see or hear from her again until she had been de-bugged and made-up by her 10-person glamour squad.

With few options to choose from, I went with the obvious plan: pretending that I was European royalty.

I looked around nervously, trying to form a look of expectation—mixed with a tiny bit of impatience—on my face. In my mind, my facial expression said, Hel-loooo! Where are my special resort henchman? I need to be escorted to my room immediately. I cannot walk through those doors like a normal person, because I am not a normal person. I’m...uh...the princess of Liechtenstein!

In reality, I probably just looked lost and stupid, like I was thinking, Hmmm…maybe I was staying at some other really huge resort that looks exactly like this one. If only I knew how to read!

Once I realized that the whole faux-fame thing probably wasn’t going to pan out, I jumped right into Plan B: pretending that I was on the hotel staff.

I saw some workers going in and out of what appeared to be a door for maintenance staff. I decided that there had to be some kind of hidden network of hallways for hotel employees so they wouldn’t be traipsing through the luxury lobby all day long. The problem was that I needed what appeared to be an employee-only keycard to unlock the door. I knew I had neither the courage nor the sleight of hand to pull off a successful key heist.

Instead, I slowly moved closer to the door with the intent of slipping in unnoticed the next time it swung open. But of course, I forgot that I’m not smooth enough to pull off a feat like that either. Somewhere between awkwardly bumping into one of the valet guys and narrowly avoiding a door-to-face collision, I realized that I was just going to have to suck it up and speed-walk through a crowd of millionaires, pretending that I didn’t have a beachball-sized sweat splotch on my back.

With as much pride as I could muster, I marched through the revolving glass door, past the concierge desk, past the fancy art gallery with the snooty attendant, past the shop with the annoyingly perfect piles of folded golf shirts, past the posh cocktail lounge where all of the trophy wives were sipping on $17 appletinis.

By the time I arrived at the elevators, I was certain that most of the resort patrons were pointing and whispering about how disgusting I looked. I pressed my sweaty index finger on the “up” button repeatedly. I swear I stood there longer than it took Oprah to run that marathon.

When I finally got back to my room, I closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief. I was pretty sure I couldn’t show my face downstairs for the rest of the night. Fortunately, they anticipated that, which is why there was a room service menu conveniently placed next to the phone.

Oh, to live in the lap of luxury!