LooseCrew-JeffO: Garside

LooseCrew-JeffO

Ramblings of an adventurous guy living in Denver and playing in the mountains.
For my trail adventures, visit my Trail Bum blog

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Garside

As one of my readers pointed out, here is more controversy about Garside.

I guess I can't get as worked-up about it as other ultrarunners because I don't run for the same reasons as many other runners. Even when I feel competitive, it's more of an internal competition.
When I meet people like Matt Carpenter and Pam Reed, and hear the stories of people like Dean Karnazes, it inspires me. I don't worship the ground anyone walks on. These people inspire me, but they aren't my heroes.
When I hear about fantastic feats, it inspires.
I don't condone lieing, but no one will ever know. Will anyone know if Floyd Landis doped? No. (It would seem so preposterous. Why would someone use a substance that has little or no value and so easy to detect? It's more believeable that someone rigged the test. But we'll never know.)
But in fairness to those who race for different reasons than I (i.e. record books), I'm interested in posting any link about this controversy.

I've come from a co-dependant background of wasted life-force and energy. I've wasted vast amounts of energy complaining about things I had no control over. If we can't ever discover a particular truth, it's best not to waste energy on it until new, pertinent info comes out - and sometimes not even then.
There's a push for an international body to figure out rules and regulations for a 'round-world run. That's positive energy and a constructive goal.

Garside will hold the GBR record. When an ultrarunner organisation spawns meaningful rules, and then someone succeeds acording to those rules, will any ultrarunner even care about GBR? In the absense of such an organisation, I'm not faulting GBR.

It's easy to cheat in most of the races I enter. There's ridges, trees, and often tight loops. People get spread out sparsely over miles. I know there must be cheaters in many of the races I've been in, short-cutting loops, but all I care about is my performance. No one can take what I do away from me, so I don't sweat what other people do.

Even a work of fiction can be very inspiring. I think the Garside story, true or false, is inspiring.
And for those who believe in karma, if he lied, he's shark bait when he swims the Atlantic!

_

Ran 13.2 miles last night. I slept like a corpse for about 9 hours.
Afterwards, I poored a tub of very cold water and soaked my legs. (Denver's tap water is ice-water!) Very painful, but it was good for me.
The feet don't feel comfortable today, but not bad enough to concern me.

1 Comments:

At 8:08 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Try reading Trust But Verify,

 

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