Nike Women's Marathon

It's been a while since I last posted.

I guess I didn't take the time to write...or maybe I just didn't have anything important to say. Now I do.

It's about the Nike Women's Marathon, held in San Francisco last Sunday. I've had a few days to read and think about it and, quite frankly, I'm not happy with Nike's handling of the situation.

It seems that Arien O'Connell set a PR and ran the fastest women's time in 2:55:11. However, the "winner" of the race ran a 3:06 something. It turns out that Arien thought of herself as a, "good solid runner" but didn't think of herself as an elite runner. So she did not line up with the so-called elite runners who started the race 20 minutes earlier.

Hmmm, I'd consider an open runner who could clock a 3 hour marathon as a good solid runner too. But I have to agree with Arien that that doesn't make you an elite runner. And by the way, only a few of the "elite" runners in the Nike Marathon even broke 3:20. In fact, more non-elite runners broke 3:20 than elite runners...go figure.

Anyway, I'm disappointed, to say the least, in Nike's current stance that they have, "...declared our winner" (per Nike media relations manager Tanya Lopez). Evidently, their primary argument is that it was two different races on the same course (I wonder if the race applications clearly indicated that).

Personally, I'm not buying their argument and until/unless Nike reverses their stance on this race, I'm not buying their products either.

There is a lot of press regarding this race and I encourage you to check it out for yourself.

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