FitLifeSF

Never one to not fuck things up for long, Nike found itself in a little bit of hot water with the running community after this weekend’s Nike’s Women’s Marathon. Shocker? Here’s the scoop:

There were over 20,000 competitors in Sunday’s Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco. And 24-year-old Arien O’Connell, a fifth-grade teacher from New York City, ran the fastest time of any of the women.

But she didn’t win.

It doesn’t get much simpler than a footrace. All it takes is a starting line, a finish line and a clock. You fire the gun and the first person to the end of the course is the winner.

However, as the marathon officials said to O’Connell – not so fast.

While O’Connell had the greatest run of her life and covered the course faster than any woman, she was told she couldn’t be declared the winner because she didn’t run with the “elite” group who were given a 20-minute head start.

While the “regular Josephines” in the race were timed by chips on their shoes, these mysterious “elites” (a field open by invite only) were timed by a start gun, thus had the opportunity to race head-to-head to the finish line. The argument of Nike officials is that the first-place elite runner had no way of knowing an “Average Annie” back with the riff-raff was going to obliterate her time by ELEVEN MINUTES (Arien finished in 2:55, the “first place winner” finished in 3:06.) Oh, and it bears mentioning that the “third place winner” of the elites and, thus, the third place winner of record of the race overall, had a slower time than the second place “Normal Nellie” race finisher.

If the Nike Women’s Marathon is supposed to be about empowerment for all women, why field an elite group at all? (Smurf’s Note: Especially an elite field that, based on times, seems no more “elite” than anyone else.)

Clearly the women in the non-elite group know a thing or two about smashing expectations and performing beyond their ability. (“The elite group could have run faster if they had known that they weren’t in first place,” say the Nike officials. Really? This is what we encourage? Only serving up the minimum effort and not a bit more?  Arien ran the race of her life, and I’m sure she poured on the heat assuming the Elite runners had already far exceeded her time. She didn’t use having “nobody to race against” as a reason to not give 110%.)

It bears mentioning that there were loads of other women on the road that day, giving it all they’ve got for a great cause.  These women may never make the papers for their efforts, but big CONGRATULATIONS are due to two inspiring ladies who ran the Nike Women’s as their first half marathon– Laine Fast, who finished the run in 2:52 and her mom, 71-years-young Judith Fast, who finished a lightening-fast 4th in her age group at 3:14.  Neither women had really run before embarking on training for the race, and that makes their effort perhaps even more worthy of praise than any in the elite field.