Marathons Are Good for Nothing

My name is Offset--Lou Offset. I appear here about this time each year to counter claims that marathon runs are good for (a) the runners and (b) the community.

Marathons aren’t good for either, or my name isn’t Lou Offset.

On March 3, in this earthly paradise, soiled only by earthquakes, brush fires, polluted air, gridlock and gang shootings, they are getting ready to stage Los Angeles Marathon VI, which will feature roughly 20,000 individuals romping through the city’s thoroughfares.

The Los Angeles Marathon delights the mayor. It enraptures the city council, not to mention the chamber of commerce, the society of podiatrists and every mother’s son advancing the virtues of long distance foot-racing.

But it doesn’t impress Lou Offset, your voice of reason, your friendly cerebral giant.

What the marathon, embracing 26 miles 385 yards, has led to is a super marathon, covering 100 miles.

It has inspired the Empire State Building Run Up, calling for entrants to ascend 86 flights, or 1575 steps.

The marathon in London also has revived interest in the wretched pastime of orienteering, known also as cunning running, whereby participants run miles through the woods at night.

Orienteers are not permitted to use lights; it would defeat the purpose of this endeavor, which is to break your fool neck.

But it must be said in behalf of cunning running that inasmuch as it is conducted in the outback, it doesn’t snarl traffic. It doesn’t require deployment of hundreds of cops.

And, thank God, it can’t be televised because the principals can’t be seen.

It was Lou Offset who wrote the manual on how to watch a marathon on TV.

Lou advised viewers to tune in the start, at which a gun is fired, signaling for thousands of guys to come running down the street in their underwear. It looks like a raid on a brothel.

The viewer then puts a chicken in a 350 oven, leaves the house, picks up the laundry, stops at the Versateller and gets the oil changed on the Dodge.

Now he is home to catch the finish of the marathon and to take the chicken out of the oven.

So, a wise-guy runner says to Lou Offset one time:

“If you’re gone that long, you’re going to come home to a pretty well-done chicken.”

Offset answers: “I am also going to miss two hours of a marathon.”

Begun in 1924, the Boston Marathon is a tribute to Paul Revere, a logical American hero. Given the option of traversing a distance on foot, or astride a horse, he chose the horse.

This made him smarter than the father of the marathon, Pheidippides who, in 490 B.C., doesn’t ride, but runs from Marathon to Athens to inform folks of war conditions. He cries:

“Rejoice, we conquer!”

He is then slated to appear with Tom Brokaw on NBC, but wrecks the interview by dropping dead.

This brings us to the medical phase of marathon running, which we once discussed clinically with Robert Rosenfeld, longtime orthopedist for the Raiders.

“What does a marathon do for a guy?” we inquire.

Rosenfeld falls silent, immersed in deep thought.

“From what I am able to ascertain,” he finally answers, “it doesn’t do a damn thing. It gets him from Point A to Point B, unless he pulls a muscle or suffers a heart attack.”

Those entering the Los Angeles Marathon are lectured by medical science on the treatment of injuries. Recommended are rest, ice, compression, elevation and buffered aspirin.

None of the foregoing is necessary if one doesn’t run.

OK, so you make the case that marathon running causes orthopedic, pulmonary and cardiac problems, not to mention hallucinating and thirst, and how do the zealots respond?

They respond: “If it is so bad for you, why does the Los Angeles Marathon each year include among its entrants cardiologists, neurologists, urologists, hematologists, proctologists, radiologists, orthopedists and psychiatrists?”

All may be skilled in their fields, but they are suspect to Lou Offset. Observes Lou:

“To any doctor who would run a marathon, I say, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ ”