Comments on: Abe Vigoda’s Bloody Nipples

By: Runshorts

Runshorts — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:16:22 +0000

I’ve noticed a trend in homemade signs that combine honesty with motivation – “you feel like %!$& because you are awesome” or “my feet would hurt if they had to run that far” or “I’d rather be holding this sign”. I’ve grown to enjoy these moments of truth amongst the “lookin’ goods”. To motivate my friends I have become some sort of helpful doomsday crier, holding a “the end is near sign” about 400 metres from the finish line. My sign is typically met with (a) laughter or (b) a desperate chorus of you better not be messing with me.

By: dean.schuster

dean.schuster — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:49:26 +0000

Perhaps appropriately, Tom Waits also performed, “Misery is the River of the World.”

http://www.ripcat.free-online.co.uk/waitshtml/miseryistheriveroftheworldlyrics.htm

- Dean

By: Viper

Viper — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 16:56:35 +0000

We tell ourselves similar lies throughout the race. “Only a 5-K to go? No problem.” I prefer the spectators help me in my self-deception campaign. After the two-thirds mark, as Tom Waits sings, I have no use for the truth. You GOT to lie to me, baby. Cheers!

By: julie

julie — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:54:07 +0000

Dean,
what I have found, which is even worse, is the fact that the race officials see me coming a couple of miles out. At that point they decide to up and move the finish line another mile further out. Can’t figure out why they do that, don’t they know I am tired!!!
julie

By: Rick (the Other White Meat)

Rick (the Other White Meat) — Sat, 30 May 2009 19:12:14 +0000

Dean, I agree all of the standard shouts of encouragement are not entirely true. And for now I’ll ignore if the cheering spectator with his BMI north of 30 has an actual intent to mislead or if they are obligated by marriage or heredity to lie to in this and other occasions. So my theory, or Einstein’s at least, is that it is merely relativity.

Maybe the shouting spectator is tailoring his comments not only to the past but to the future as well and using some kind of sliding scale? Take the big three ‘lies’

1) You are almost there.
Sure, you start hearing this as early as mile 15 and you have over 10 miles to go, which seems like a long way. But if you consider the marathon not to just be a 26.2 mile jaunt, but instead to be the nearly 500 miles most people put in to training to ultimately cross the finish line, well 10 measly miles *do* seem like you are almost there.

2) You look great.
Maybe the cheering spectator simply knows what is to come and when he sees you at mile 20 looking like crap he simply had expectations that you would look crappier? Case in point, when I received similar cheers last fall, maybe the spectator more than suspected I would end up after the finish line like a discarded rag doll about 50 yards past the finish laying prone with some drool in my beard and one testicle peaking out of my shorts (scaring small children, except the O’Leary kids, who thought it was funny). So by comparison, my sorry malnourished scarecrow look at mile 23 *did* look pretty good.

3) The finish is right around the corner.
Well this one is harder to justify so all I can imagine is that in most cases the finish is *around* the corner, and the next corner, and the next, and the several miles in between. But I don’t know if I can let one little adverb like “*right* around the corner” label the whole spectator as a perjurer. At best I would call it a half truth like you tell a child and then comfort yourself it was more true than false.

rick