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To:	margotdarby
From: (your email)
Subject:	Re: Is Charity-Running Itself the Problem?
Message:	-------------------- margotdarby's original posting: Bambi's hilarious suggestions rang a bell in my head: those charity runners and six-hour-plus pacers do like to eat, don't they? I recently did a marathon in Canada where I'd signed up for the early (4:30) pasta-seating. I'd signed up for it months before, but when 4:30 rolled around I found the early seating had been cancelled, or rather (I was told) it had been "combined" with the 6:00pm seating. Truth was, the entire early seating had been reassigned to Team in Training. From what I could see of the TNT people that afternoon, they certainly they didn't need any extra carb-loading. Anyway, at the 6pm seating I and others had to stand in queue for more than a half-hour in a crowded dining room...on the evening before a marathon, let us not forget. The marathon scene in North America and Europe is really pretty tacky these days. Let's face it, it's just a form of tourism for fat people who like to dress in trainers, t-shirts and waistpacks, and have discovered marathons to be a useful pretext for otherwise pointless travel. Who's reponsible for this? The tour operators who want $4000 for a four-day trip? John "The Penguin" Bingham? No, it's the charity groups, with their legions of the well-meaning unfit, their "golden bond" entry allocations, and their incessant pitch that it's perfect not to know what you're doing just so long as it's in service of our favorite cause.