The Response

With The Showdown over, and all the naysayers proven wrong – that’s why I created the poll – one would suspect that things in the ‘running’ department would have cooled off between Brad and Kieran, aside from the continuous gloating on the ego-manic Kieran side.
This assumption would be dead wrong. In fact, Kieran and Brad have been at loggerheads since the victory in The Showdown (if Brad was writing this blog victory would be written as such - “victory” note the quotation marks). As many have observed, Brad (yes, Neil, it is in fact Brad – anonymous or misrepresenting commenting has not become all the rage on this blog yet – check FasterSkier for that kind of community) has thrown down the gauntlet, admitted defeat in the short distance, and plugged for a rematch on none other than the grand-daddy of road races – The Marathon.

In my opinion, this is not a fair fight. I draw you to the work comparison. I don’t expect to get paid the same amount per hour as a person in the same field who is 30 years my senior. That individual has accumulated a wealth of information that can only be gained by experience over time, and therefore the corresponding hourly rate should be much higher than some 22 year old kid who just walked in off the street.

Equate this to running a marathon – Brad has ran countless marathons (actually, 25 Ottawa Marathons alone – he has a bunch of others on his resume as well). He has a wealth of information regarding courses, pacing, feeds, and every other thing you need to know for running a marathon that I could not have hoped to accrue in my time on earth. Kieran running the marathon would be similar to a Juvenile Boy stepping on the start line of the 50 k at the Winter Olympics. The kid could ski, not as well as Northug, Kershaw and Hellner in the technical sense, but the motions would be similar. But he’s never raced 50 k in his life, and probably hasn’t even skied 50 km in one stretch. He hasn’t had the multiple years to build up the aerobic and muscular base to compete. It would be a slaughter.

However, because I don’t want to seem like a wimp on my own blog, I have a counter proposal.

I will not run The Marathon, and definitely not the Ottawa Marathon against Brad. The cards are simply too stacked in his favour, and I have an old football injury which is aggravated by running on pavement (wahhh, wahhh, I know). However, I will make the challenge that I will run any trail run of Brad’s choosing between the distances of 10 and 40 km. If it is in the woods, bear free, and involves mud, Kieran will be there. Count on it.