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).

Drugs are bad, mmmkay

When you’re a college athlete, you get used to peeing in cups. There’s the glucose/protein test, the glucose protein re-test (because the smarties in athletic training used expired testing strips the first time around), random athletic department drug tests, and of course, random NCAA drug tests.

In my case, the word “random” actually meant “mandatory,” because I could pretty much count on being selected. Just as my backpack full of camera equipment usually leads to my “random” selection to have my personal space invaded by an electronic wand at airport security, my mediocre cross country and track performances obviously aroused suspicion amongst the performance-enhancing drug police.

I recently became employed (yay!) by a company that requires pre-employment drug screening (ugh), which meant I would have to attend yet another involuntary-urine-sample extravaganza.

The difference with this pee party, though, was that instead of testing for things like anabolic steroids, HGH and Claritin D (that’s not a typo—being “Claritin clear” can get you banned from NCAA competition), the nice folks at Occupational Health Services would be screening for substances like marijuana and cocaine.

I wasn’t too worried—I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m not a meth head. To be on the safe side, I abstained from taking any allergy medication in the hours leading up to my appointment.

When I arrived, I was immediately aware that this test was unlike any other I’d been subjected to. There would be no Dixie cups, no pubic restrooms, no sophomore athletic training students giggling each time they read the instruction sheet out loud.

This test was serious. It was administered by a real medical professional in a real medical office. I had to wait 35 minutes in a real waiting room, where I read an issue of Highlights and got a real headache from Hidden Pictures.

By the time the nurse finally called me back, I knew I would have no problem providing enough milliliters of, um, sampling material. She gave me a ten-minute spiel about how to handle the test cup and reminded me several times not to flush the toilet in the testing restroom. (Yes, there was a bathroom specifically designated for drug tests. The faucet didn’t even work, which led me to believe that at some point in the past, someone had mixed up some Crystal Light in an attempt to outsmart the system.) I nodded and robotically muttered “OK” several times, half-listening and trying to speed up the process because I really had to go.

When I walked into the bathroom, the first thing I noticed was the huge, bright orange sign on the toilet that said, “DO NOT FLUSH” in dark capital letters. The toilet handle was also taped. I suspected they’d had some serious problems with reactionary flushing. I wondered why anyone would even need to flush the toilet. Wasn’t the whole point to pee into the cup?

After I had done my business, I hurried back to the nurse’s office to collect my things, assuming I was good to go. But you know what they say about assuming…

She told me to have a seat while she retrieved the sample. She returned with my pee cup in her latex-gloved hands. I was then required to watch her pour my urine into two separate plastic canisters—one “A” sample, one “B” sample.

This is getting kind of sick and twisted, I thought, just as the nurse handed me the two sealed containers and instructed me to initial the labels. As I held the bottles, I noticed my pee was still warm. Weird.

I half expected her to pull out an ink pad and make me put my finger prints on the labels too, but much to my relief, she abruptly pulled off her gloves and said, “Thank you, you’re dismissed. Results by next week.”

And before I could get in a reply, she was gone, presumably to administer another test. On the bright side, a busy pre-employment drug-testing clinic must be a sign of an economic pick-up.

Also on the bright side, no calls yet, which means I’m probably not a meth head. Probably.