Paul Ryan’s Marathon: Everyone Else Remembers His or Her Time

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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/09/paul-ryans-marathon-everyone-else-remembers-his-or-her-time.html

September 4, 2012
Paul Ryan’s Marathon: Everyone Else Remembers His or Her Time
Posted by Nicholas Thompson

Robert Gauthier recalls racing to the end of Grandma’s Marathon, in Duluth, Minnesota, on a hot day in June of 1990. “I finished strong with a sprint,” he said. I had called him out of the blue, and asked what his time was in that race. I knew what it was—4:01:24—but wanted to hear what he’d say. “It would have been four-hour-ish,” he said. “I had already gotten old, fat, and slow.”

Gauthier, the C.E.O. of a company in Minnesota called Gruve Technologies, was thirty-five then, and he’s fifty-eight now. He’s also the man who finished directly ahead of Paul Ryan in the Congressman’s now famous marathon. “Oh, that’s funny,” Gauthier said when I told him whom he had just edged out.

As has now been reported in many places, Ryan told Hugh Hewitt in an August interview that he had run a marathon in “under three, high twos.” But then, after an investigation by Runner’s World, Ryan admitted he’d actually run 4:01:25. (To put the difference in race times in perspective: Lance Armstrong ran his first marathon in just under three hours; P. Diddy ran his first in 4:14.) In a statement first given to The New Yorker, Ryan joked about the error, and said, “The race was more than 20 years ago.” Since then, runner’s forums—and political forums—have been debating whether what Ryan said was a lie or a mistake. “He didn’t run that” is perhaps the most common joke.

Gauthier, for his part, thinks it’s ridiculous that anyone could turn a 4:01 into a sub-three. “He wasn’t within a cannon shot of two-fifty. Maybe at eighteen miles.” Gauthier adds, “I would never lie about my marathon time, though I might fib a bit about my golf score.”

[spanone]

1. in golf it's the difference between shooting 82 and 72....you don't forget your scores or times

he's a liar.

[Brickbat]

2. Every runner I have ever known remembered his/her PR in any given race. Not necessarily the result

of every race, but how well they run. And I know a lot of runners.

[wilt the stilt]

3. 4 hours for a twenty year old is only OK

I have a couple of friends who ran less that 3 hours and qualified and went to the Boston Marathon. They could really run with great strides. They both ran track in h.s. I never ran marathons but did do the Boulder bolder in 45 minutes and 30 seconds.

When you are twenty and if you trained right you should run in the 3 hour and 30 minute time frame. You are probbaly never as strong as you are then. 4 hours is OK but nothing I would brag about.