See you in Boston….”Qualifying is a piece of cake”
Hope to have a few other cake eaters from Wilkesboro their with us too.

Best of Luck/Skill we’ll be watching you get there.

Or more likely, “I want to be out here running, but this hill makes me feel like I want to be on my couch and never run again.” I invent a reality to help me resolve the tension. The new reality serves to help me achieve a goal or get past a checkpoint.

There may be something to that.

As for my own culpability in running lies… I never said I was innocent.

- Dean

Is there some irresistible yet invisible aspect of running that causes the otherwise honorable and truthful person suddenly succumb to dishonesty or is there something intrinsic in the self flagellation of running that draws those inclined to perjury like a compass is drawn to magnetic north?

After much careful thought I believe I have to side with the former though I must say the number of politicians who claim running as a pastime made me seriously weigh the later. As mentioned by Dean there is of course Clinton, both Bush’s, and Al Core who all claim running as a favorite pastime. And at risk of exposing my own latent misogyny, I can only hope that once Hillary is fully ensconced in the White House she chooses pilates over running. Bill in those running shorts was bad enough, I really could do without Hillary or any cabinet officials for that matter in a jog bra. But I do digress…

I’m going to have to say that lying for runners is a merely a defense mechanism. Similar to ‘The Stockholm Syndrome’, where an abductee sympathizes with his/her captor, or prisoner of war might construct brick-for-brick a complete house to prove to themselves that their captors do not control their entire world. So to do I think lying forms a critical escape for the runner.

Where I differ with Dean is the part that he plays in the lying with his running partners. It is not that your running partner is lying TO you, rather he is looking for validation of his own illusion he has created while he runs and having intruded on your running partners dillusion, you are the only person available. When told that you are not running to the top of the hill, your running partner is doing nothing more than trying to convince himself that he does not have to summit the hill. And like the proverbial sleep walker, you might try to gently nudge your running partner by saying softly “we nearly summitted the hills, let’s cut back the pace a bit”. But whatever you do, do not wake your partner from his dream, some runners have been known to get violent when they are forced back to reality to aggressively.

So really Dean, if your running partners truly believes what they say is true, who are you to call it lying?

rick

This comment had the decided advantage of containing two very large lies. Firstly, I did not look “great.” I looked like death warmed over with cold, congealed gravy on top. Secondly, this was mile 10 in a 13.1 mile race. That’s 3.1 miles of pain and suffering. Tell me I’m almost done at mile 13, please.

“Hang in there” was okay.

- Dean

Note: I would amend your blog entry to be titled: “All (male) runners lie.” Perhaps others have different experiences, but I have never been lied to (in this sense) by a female runner. Only men.