Conversation our friend David recently had at a party
- Me: So, what have you guys been up to?
- Girl Who Ran Marathon: We just ran a marathon last weekend!
- Me: Wow, that's awesome--congratulations!
- Guy Who Ran Marathon: Thanks. We'd never done anything like that before.
- Me: It's really impressive. How'd you guys hold up?
- Girl WRM: Pretty well. I mean, we'd trained and everything.
- Me: Sure.
- Guy WRM: Well, she lost a couple of toenails.
- Girl WRM: Oh, yeah, right--I lost a couple of toenails
- Me: [Unavoidable horror-stricken look]
- Girl WRM: It totally wasn't a big deal.
- Me: Really?!
- Guy WRM: Yeah, happens all the time.
- Me: Wait--that's normal?
- Girl WRM: Yeah.
- Me: So...oh. So did that kind of thing ever happen when you were training?
- Girl WRM: Oh, no. The most we ever ran in training was like 20 miles.
- Guy WRM: It's doing the whole thing that really gets you.
- Me: No, yeah, right. Totally. Makes sense.
- Guy WRM: And we knew that that might happen.
- Me: Sure. So wait--are there other things like that, like injury risks or whatever that you knew about going in?
- Girl WRM: Yeah, totally.
- Me: Like what?
- Girl WRM: There's lots of stuff...like, oh, your nipples can bleed!
- Guy WRM [nodding sagely]: Yeah, the nipple bleeding thing.
- Me: [Unavoidable horror-stricken look.]
- Guy WRM: It's totally not a big deal.
- Me: If you run a whole marathon, your nipples bleed?
- Guy WRM: Yeah. It's really common.
- Girl WRM [helpfully, as though to a seven-year-old]: It's because of the friction? With your shirt? And your nipples? They rub up and down?
- Me: Yeah, no, I--I get it. But so...
- Girl WRM: For girls it's not usually as big a deal, because you're wearing a sports bra.
- Me: Right.
- Guy WRM: And if you're a guy you just tape your nipples up before you start.
- Me: Tape them?
- Girl [back in seven-year-old mode]: Like with tape?
- Me: Uh-huh. So here's something that's always gotten me about marathons: It seems like such a long distance that the human body isn't really built for it.
- Guy WRM: The human body is totally built for running. How do you think ancient humans got food? They hunted! You'd have to run down your food or you'd starve. It's natural selection.
- Me: I guess I always saw ancient humans as using their brains to attain superiority on the food chain. Like, ambushing stuff. Or trapping it and domesticating it or whatever.
- Guy WRM: Still, you'd have to run something down eventually.
- Me: For twenty-six miles?
- Girl WRM: Um, I don't know if you know this? But the reason it's called a "marathon" is that Marathon was a city in Ancient Greece? And after this battle there, this guy ran from there to Athens, which was 26.2 miles, to tell the Athenians about the result of the battle?
- Me: His name was Phidippides. And he dropped dead on arrival.
- Girl WRM: But he ran it.
- Me: You think his toenails fell off?
- Guy WRM: Probably.
