Recently an office-wide email was sent inviting staff to enter the local marathon...as part of a relay team. WTF?!! 'Scuse me but isn't this kind of...well, cheating? I mean, isn’t the whole point of a marathon to run 26 miles (and 385 yards if it's a proper modern marathon)? Or do we have here another manifestation of the modern obsession with making things 'accessible'? Your humble scribe can well imagine the thought process of the equality-diversity-accessibility co-ordinator who thought up this one (imagine it being spoken in the whiny adenoidal tone all of the 'Righteous' use):
"Oh dear the majority of the populace are too fat and unfit to run a marathon without expiring. But we can't have them feeling excluded - their feelings might be huuuurt".
So, the answer, it would seem, is to redefine a marathon as four people sharing it. Equally, no doubt. (After all, we can't have one runner claiming credit for a greater distance than their team mates. No, that would probably be seem as elitist). But, surely, this devalues the achievement of running a marathon. A marathon is supposed to be hard - very few people are capable of accomplishing the feat of running one. And that's the point, isn't it?. It's about sorting winners from losers, wheat from chaff, sheep from...well, from other sheep in this case (this is the population of the UK we're talking about: the sheeple; of course, if you're reading this blog you're obviously capable of independent, rational thought and therefore, automatically, above the sheeple). I bet poor old Pheidippides is spinning in his grave at this mockery of his sacrifice. Somehow, I feel this is all of a piece with the all-must-have-prizes times in which we live.
Mind you, having said all that, I think running 26 miles (or even 6 and a bit) is more than a tad silly in this day and age - I mean, if you need to travel that kind of distance use a car.
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