All hail the mediocre!

The Boston Marathon is just around the corner, and the Runner's World marathon forum is crowded with posts from good runners looking to improve their times even more or complaining about those who have easier qualification standards. Meanwhile, our news has been littered with comments about fund-raising relays that focus on slow runners and walkers who just want to finish a certain distance and help a certain group of the unfortunate. There really aren't any event geared toward the average athlete. Those of us who are decent, but not good, know we will only win an award if we happen to be one of three in our age group. We will always be entering big events through the luck of the draw or through expensive group efforts. By definition, we are the majority, but at big events, we are literally asked to wait in corrals while the fast people get their early starts.

I say we deserve our day in partly sunny skies! And this is why, someday, I will organize a series of road races for the rest of us, culminating in the Mediocre Marathon. We will have strict qualification guidelines. To run in my races, you must fall within the middle 50% of times in your sex/age group division for the distance in question. My race will offer all the standard race awards (first-third for each division), but the grand prize will go to the median runner (the runner who has an equal number of people both ahead and behind him).

It may sound odd, but I think this race would have tremendous appeal to runners, especially with the free beer and pizza I plan to offer at the post-race celebration. Now all I need is time, money, and a t-shirt idea.