Two Sports Notes
I was watching the Women's World Cup Final with Eli 6.1, and I realized something about soccer.I really enjoy watching "the beautiful game." I really don't enjoy watching "the sluggish, boring game." So when the score of the final was Grinding Machine-Like Defense 3, Beautiful Passionate Attack 0, it was kind of depressing.
Here's what I realized as I was thinking about the match. With the limited number of substitutions in soccer, and with the same players doing the attacking as well as doing the defending, playing aggressively with an evenly-skilled opponent seems like a sure recipe for defeat, because attacking takes so much more energy than defending. By the last third of the match, the attacking team is exhausted, while the defending team seems far fresher and can then push the attack.
Which is even more depressing, obviously, but at least it helps me make sense of all those 1-0 games.
Haile Gebrselassie set a world record in the men's marathon yesterday--2:04:26.
That's 4:44 a mile, and if you can even run ONE mile at 4:44, you're a badass, let alone 26 of them in a row. It's stunning, and what I wonder now is if I'll still be alive when someone breaks two hours in the marathon, which will be one of the greatest athletic achievements in history.
Is it possible? Well, not now, but do I think that thirty or forty years from now, someone will be able to run 4:34 miles for an entire marathon? Absolutely.
When I was running seriously (or trying to, anyway), I read a copy of Derek Clayton's Running to the Top. Clayton was a towering figure in marathon history--he ran 2:08:33 at Antwerp, Belgium, in 1969, and when I read his book in 1980, it was still the record.
Clayton's book also detailed how incredibly hardcore he was when it came to training. His mileage and intensity were legendary, and the book was unforgettable.
The man who eventually broke Clayton's record was also an Australian--Robert de Castella. de Castella was unique because for a world-class marathon runner, he was big--if I remember correctly, he weighed about 160 pounds. That's not big compared to a regular person, but most world-class marathoners are in the 130's.
In person, though, de Castella still looked small (but sturdy), and the reason I know is because I actually warmed up with him for about five seconds once. Actually, instead of saying "warmed up," I should say "stalked," because he ran in a 10k in Dallas once in the early 1980's, and when I saw him warming up by himself, I ran over and blubbered something about how much I admired him. Which I did--he was a running hero to me at the time, and I followed his career in minute detail for many years.
He was very gracious, even though I can't remember a word he said.
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