178 pages and counting

From time to time I like to poke into Letsrun for kicks and giggles. It's a free-for-all running forum that anybody who knows anything and anyone in running is familiar with. It's not uncommon for elites and sub-elites and coaches to chime into the mix, it gives some insight into the goings-on of the high-end running world...although Runner's World it's certainly not (thankfully).

Among the more popular threads is Henry Rono's quest for the 50+ mile record. Henry was an elite athlete in the 70's who set several world records but never made it to the Olympics due to the Kenyan boycott of the 1976 Montreal games and 1980 in Moscow. In subsequent years Rono fell into alcoholism and his career halted.

After following this thread for the last couple of years I'm convinced Rono could give a shit about the record and is more inclined to seek out appearance and related fees. Gebresellase he ain't, at least not anymore. Runner's World did a lengthy article on Rono last year. The author ran into walls trying to get Rono to contribute directly, but Rono wouldn't offer squat without some dollars in the mix. Instead the article was built around the content of the thread on Letsrun, a sort of Cole's notes compression of 2 years of ramblings.

If you follow the latter portions of the thread, you may find the tone of many to be changing from supportive to doubt to frustration to ambivalence. Henry's last 5k time trial was 20:34. Geez, my last race (last Saturday) was 20:51. If Rono thinks he can get the master mile record off that performance, maybe I should pull my own socks up and get my own. Of course I've got about 100,000 more capable masters runners in my way...which is my way of saying Rono hasn't got a hope in hell of getting that record.