| Seems that Mr. Ryan claims he ran sub 3 hours in the marathon when in fact it was 4 hours. As a result, the partisans are excoriating him here and here and well, whereever democrat politics are.
And fortunately for him, he's quickly (upon discovery) admitted the fabrication.
But why did he say it in the first place? Because the simplist answer is probably the right one, here's why.
As preface, I've been involved in aspects of running and racing for nearly 35 years; know where to look for practically anyone's recent result and know bullshit when I hear it. And frankly, as soon as I heard Ryan sub 3 and that he claims he could run 10 miles but not a marathon I couldn't help myself but question it and check coolrunning.com and athlinks.com and I couldn't find him.
Scott Douglas has much more data and probably more tenacity at his disposal and found Ryan's result as a 20 year old at 4 hours +.
4 hours sucks, that is, if you're a 20 year old and you actually trained.
And here, IMHO, is what happened. He was athletic and jumped into the marathon ill prepared and crashed and burned. Seems he didn't go back to the 26.2 mile race either. Lesson learned.
So here we are 20 years later and whenever someone asks "did you ever run a marathon?" the follow-up questions are: (1) how fast and (2) did you ever run boston. Happens everytime.
So what went through Paul's head when asked? |
