{"id":1644,"date":"2019-05-05T11:49:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-05T16:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gilcanrun.com\/?p=1644"},"modified":"2019-05-05T11:49:52","modified_gmt":"2019-05-05T16:49:52","slug":"oops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gilcanrun.com\/?p=1644","title":{"rendered":"Oops!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I have been keeping up with consistent running<\/a> and a core routine. Granted my core routine is a piss-take\/what will this do? rip-off of the “One Punch Man” workout. If you don’t know what One Punch Man is, please at least watch the anime, if not read the manga, it may be the greatest thing ever created. Remember, I am always an iconoclast and I love subverting any genre.
Anyway, most mornings I’ve been horribly depressed and\/or tired and just it’s been a total bear to get myself moving. But I’ve kept myself moving which is the most important thing to do. As long as you keep moving you’re doing alright. But I digress, I knew the date had changed on the Cathedral Marathon and that it was today, I figured it would be an 8am start.
I left the apartment at 9:45am, figuring the most I’d see would be the 4+ hour people coming down the road when I met the course, as my usual route follows most of the Trani section of the marathon. Figured I could cheer them on a bit and deal with the discomfort of the course custodians, EMTS, Police, etc., thinking I was a runner for a very short time…
Well, it wasn’t an 8am start as I thought, it was a 9am start, so when I turned from Via Mario Pagano onto Via Alvarez, I met up with the leader of the race! Wow was I surprised. So I was telling everyone behind the leader how close they were, I also altered my course to avoid the marathon as much as possible so I didn’t get in anyone’s way. There are no aid stations in Trani, so I didn’t have to worry about that, as for whatever reason they don’t have aid stations until almost the half-way point.
Well, as I ran I started calculating the finish times for the leaders and as I recall I said to myself, “If the race started around 9am, based on them reaching the 15km mark (Trani is home to the 14-17 km marks of the race) at about 9:45, they should finish in about 2:35. This is assuming the race basically started the standard 10 minutes late of everything that is always 10 minutes late down here.
So, I’m sitting here just now and I see the winner finished in 2:40. I have to say, I am really good at that. I personally am never going to be super fast, I’m not slow either, but still. The one thing I can really do is figure out things mathematically.
Anyway, I went from figuring I’d cheer on the middle of the pack people to cheering on the front-runners. And then, since I changed my usual running route to avoid the marathon as much as possible, I also caught the back of the race people which was good. I tried to remind them to just keep their feet moving, it’s only when you stop that you’re in trouble in a marathon, any time is a good time when you complete 26.2 miles, that’s a fact.
Some spectators and inadvertent spectators commented that I should be running, or I was running the wrong way, etc., but I won’t be running any marathons until I back to 100% health and happy with my times. If I’m going to run any races, I will run to comtinue to improve on my PR set in the Cathedral Marathon 2 years ago.
Plus, I want to avoid anything, and all things, to do with the IAAF. Fuck them for their ruling on Caster Semenya. Listen people, we are all born exactly as we are. If Caster Semenya was a man, and she was competing exactly as she was, nobody would say a fucking word about her body chemistry. She is retiring, and that’s sad given how amazing a runner she is at middle distances. But listen very closely, and listen well, just because her body produces certain hormones at a higher rate than normal does not mean she should have to alter that! Nobody would ever ask a man to do the same thing, I also imagine if she wasn’t African, nobody would complain either.
Which brings me to another issue, the Trieste Running Association banning African runners from their upcoming half marathon, fuck these motherfuckers too. What kind of racist, fascist bullshit is this? These bastards need to be told the fuck off. I wrote their sponsors and said I would definitely not be using them. The only international sponsor I recognized was Booking dot Com. I suggest if you give a shit about anything (which if you’ve been here and read this, then you probably give a shit) that you contact Booking dot Com and tell them that they should withdraw their sponsorship of the Trieste Half Marathon, and any other race that uses racism and bigotry as their entry criteria.
The fact is, if you feel a certain group has an edge on you atheltically then YOU NEED TO WORK HARDER. Not ban them from competing, not change the rules to “nerf” them, by making them take drugs to reduce their edge or whatever. It’s up to you to make yourself better, not them to make themselves worse. If you change the rules, or leave people out because they’re “too dominant” then all you’re doing it admitting defeat. All you have done is shown you are lazy and undeserving.
It’s absolutely disgusting and embarassing that this is happening in this day and age, on both counts, of the half-marathon and Caster Semenya. I am ashamed of the running community on the whole here. These are things we need to loudly and vociferously oppose. It’s a sign of these horribly racist and fascist times, that people feel emboldened to rule in this way, and those of us closest to the situation should be the loudest and most forceful in opposition.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n