and about irish christian names, in general.

If her sister-in-law had beaten a female runner in an identical manner, I doubt she would think this such a memorable story.

(Reminds me of a line in The Plutonium Blonde: “I don’t fight women. If I win, it’s bad for my image, and if I lose it’s bad for my image”).

I once saw a picture of an early Victorian coal mine. Man digging coal with a pick, woman hauling cart full of coal. I wonder how many commentors on this blog could do either of their jobs 14 hours a day, on their diet.

For a start, once the challenger turns off the course, it’s a concession of defeat. Both parties know this. There’s no need for the winner to continue following the defeated challenger.

Secondly, the challenger is usually so exhausted he or she takes the opportunity of the turn to slow down or stop, in which case Sarah would have run past.

Third, elite runners prize fast paths, and so are unlikely to turn on to slow side streets unless they have to.

Also, the scenario of stopping at the lights doesn’t ring true to this scenario. If Sarah had a faster cruising speed, she would have established this when both runners resumed running.

The scenario where these sort of challenges rankle is where a less capable runner overtakes or tries to overtake. That’s when the elite runner might decide to retaliate with a forced pace.

Also, in the situation as described, starting at traffic lights, it’s possible the guy was simply being polite by trying to go ahead, so that Sarah didn’t have to worry about some bozo trailing her.

And as many have pointed out, this isn’t a gender thing. As a male, I typically encounter a challenge each time I run during summer. On one occasion, that included a good woman runner, of which there are many these days.

This guy in Kieran’s story might or might not have been a jerk. You really can’t tell for sure just because Kieran tells the story the way he does. People on the jogging trail are naturally competitive—I’ve been casually competitive while out running with men, women, cars, and even thunderstorms. Cars—you see one ahead or behind you and you decide you’ll reach a given landmark before it reaches you. Thunderstorms—I did race a line of cumulonimbus clouds home once. I lost, but for ten minutes probably reached my full potential as a runner. I knew they were coming because the TV weatherman said so and thought I could go on my usual long run and enjoy the distant lightning on the horizon and beat them back easily. Turned out not to be the case. I guess those storms took me down a peg, striking a grand blow for the equality of weather systems.

The running story I told up above about the time I passed an attractive woman and we started racing could easily be retold from her perspective as an inspirational anti-patriarchal tale where a balding guy clearly going at a pace he couldn’t sustain (true—I was nearing the end of my 6 mile run and picking up the pace as I always did towards the end) had to show his male superiority by passing a mere girl, only to find that she could match him stride for stride. Boy, I must have had my delicate Victorian male ego crushed when it turned out I couldn’t lose her, even when I broke into a sprint for the last few hundred yards. Trouble is, I know the story from the male side and I enjoyed the whole thing and if the woman had been older (in my age range rather than probably 15-20 years younger) I’d have struck up a conversation afterwards, though given the age difference I didn’t. And I probably did glance back to see where she was—I can’t remember, but I’ve done that other times when I pass someone. The main difference from Kieran’s story was that I didn’t veer off onto side trails and have her follow me everywhere—then I would have thought that was um, really, really inappropriate. I’ve never done that to anyone or had anyone do that to me and if you ask me about such behavior I’m not likely to think it’s fine, no matter what genders are involved. But probably that’s just another Victorian male supremacist asshole trait, no doubt and if I criticize that behavior I’m just upholding the patriarchy.

Finally, maybe you nonrunners don’t know this, but there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, surprising about a woman being able to outrun a man. It might have been surprising, in, oh, the Victorian era. Yeah, the best men can beat the best women, but down here with ordinary mortals with a range of VO2 maxes, it’s expected that a really good woman can beat a fairly good man. I point this out because some of you seem to think we’re bothered that a woman beat a man openly. Oh horrors, pass the smelling salts, I think I’m going to faint. I’ve been in marathons—it’s not like there weren’t hundreds or thousands of women faster than me on those days. On my best day ever Kieran’s sister could probably beat me if she gave me an 8 mile head start. Or maybe even a bigger one—I’d have to know her time. If she wants to put me in my place if I happen to pass her on the street or the trail by picking up the pace and leaving me in the dust, go right ahead. I’d stare with admiration.

Another thing that might be—anecdotally—at work here is just not wanting to be in the vicinity of another runner. As an occasional trudger—it doesn’t make sense to call what I do running—around a very short indoor track, I notice everyone (myself included) doing a little pas-de-deux with our strides when one runner approaches another. There’s the speed we intend to go, and then there’s the unconscious reaction to other people in our vicinity, and they get mixed up in annoying little ways. When someone just slightly faster than me is creeping up on me, I find myself going considerably above my normal pace because it tickles some proximity warning in my brain to have someone coming up like that. Sometimes to the point where I’m going at the insanely blistering speed of a 10-minute mile.

Apparently his perception was that as a female, I should “give up” my plac to him. Instead, I placed my largest most ungodly lure on the line and proceeded to thrash the water, up and downstream, frighting every fish within 50 yards. I imagine after a life time of such interactions, women just may find these sorts of behaviors tiresome. Ya think?

But it was only after having described this interaction to my parents did the dynamics become clear. “If you’d been a man, they wouldn’t have let you get away with that.” said my father. If she’d been a man”, responded my mother, “they wouldn’t have placed her in that position to begin with.”.

Steelheading as a competitive sport? I think not. Obviously an attitude adjustment was in order.

bear in mind, these numbers are with respect to an already self-selected group of individuals. world class is generally rarer than 99.99 %ile.

my son’s IQ puts him somewhere in the region of 99.98%ile. one in 5000. which means that, for most people who ever get to know him, he’ll have the highest IQ of anyone they ever get to know (let’s not get into a quibble about whether IQ means anything. it’s a measurement. it measures something. that’s all.) but as i like to point out, if there were a professional sport whose primary qualifying talent were IQ, my son would have only a small chance of making the bigs. why? well think about it. how many openings are there in any given year in Major League Baseball? a couple of hundred? and how many males are there in a given annual cohort in the US? 2 million? So maybe one in 10,000 will get a shot. What’s more, most of those 200 guys will be gone within a year or two. The real elite—the guys who play MLB for 10 years or more—well, how many of their jobs open up each year? 30 or 40? And then, the elite of the elite—the guys who get their numbers retired? A handful a year. One in a million.

that is how elite the elite are. check out the NHL. you know those guys who are only there because they are goons? well, unless you’ve hung out with some very, very good hockey players, you’ve never met anyone who can handle the puck as well as the lowliest goon in the NHL.

someone told me a story about Mark Johnson when he was assistant coach of the UW Badgers Men’s team—that he could keep the puck away from a half-dozen of the Badgers at once, with the blue lines as boundaries. he’s a wizard. and you know what? he had a very ordinary career in the NHL. a guy like Bobby Orr would be able to keep the puck away from a half-dozen Mark Johnsons. (actually, you can find video of the actual Bobby Orr pretty much doing exactly that, during games.)

by the way, i was riding my bike home from work one day, and a guy on roller blades blew past me. i tried to keep up, but could not. he was clearly a speed-skater out for some summer training. who knows, maybe it was casey fitzgerald.

So when I was out running, I’d find myself speeding up a bit to keep pace with or go faster than anyone else on the road. Male or female, it didn’t matter. Young or old, it didn’t matter. If someone sped up to keep pace with me when I went by, no problems—why shouldn’t they? Maybe we’d race for a bit, and then one or both of us would fall back into our regular pace.

However, if anyone ever followed me around for an extended period of time, dogging my steps, following me around corners…then they’d be a creep. The sister-in-law is a creep, period. Trying to excuse creepy, antisocial behavior as “challenging gender stereotypes” is asinine.

Oh, and by the way, your assumptions that you know what the man in the story was thinking, and that you have some inside knowledge of his attitudes on gender…what are those assumptions based on? The fact that he’s a male, apparently, since you have no other knowledge about him. Congratulations, you’ve made negative assumptions about a stranger based on their gender. There’s a word for that, you know.