So Lance Armstrong finished the Boston Marathon yesterday in 2:50:58 - so what!

Actually, his time was quite impressive, but the hype that surrounded his achievement was less so. He is clearly an accomplished athlete and very successful fundraiser, yet the media coverage during yesterday’s race made great play on the claim that his longest training run before Boston was just 14 miles. When you have someone who is clearly a inspiration to others, what sort of impression does that create? How many potential runners are sitting at their desks today considering taking on a marathon with the belief that if Lance can do it after just 14 miles, so can I? Anyone you has completed the 26.2 mile event and trained for many weeks to do it, will know that such an approach may get you to the finish but the risks of injury or failure are dramatically increased.

If one of the objectives of using people like Lance as an example to encourage others to adopt a healthy active lifestyle, the message shouldn’t be blown up with suggestions that endurance events, like the marathon, can be achieved with little or no effort. The Boston Marathon is claimed to one of the biggest in the world and the 2008 fielded a record number of competitors. Yet how many of those individual runners did the media coverage draw attention to? There was ample time given to the elite runners, and of course Lance, yet the average runners who most of us can more closely relate to didn’t seem to get much individual focus. If you’re involved in running, it is possible you knew someone running yesterday’s and could draw inspiration from them, but hearing stories about some of the other remarkable feats many of the other runners had achieved could have been just as attention grabbing as watching a former professional athlete cross the line.