The Loneliness of the Inframarathoner

I offer this post in the spirit of Steve Martin’s character Harris K. Telemacher, who begins his narration of L. A. Story by saying that he has had "seven heart attacks, all imagined."

I was up on Wildwood Trail running today when a redheaded runner with a race bib numbered 6063 came around a corner. “So, what’s the race?” I asked her. “Oh,” she said, “it’s an ultramarathon. I’ve done 30 miles and have one to go.” Since I knew the end of the race, given where she was on the trail, was going to be Lower McCleay Park, so I knew she had nearly two miles to go, but I didn’t say that.

I said, “Oh, I’m running an inframarathon myself and on this same trail.” I think I might have wanted her to laugh, but she had already done thirty miles, so that was asking a lot. And I was pretty sure I didn’t want her to think there was another race on the same trail on the same day. So I said, “At least if one is infra- and the other ultra-, the runners won’t be running into each other.” She didn’t laugh at that either.

I complain a lot about people who use words based in Greek but who don’t know how to handle the plurals. I get “criterias” every term in essays at Portland State. These are people who have never heard the word criterion and if they had, they would think the plural was criterions. So I complain.

On the other hand, it offers opportunities. Just a few years ago, I invented the hyperdermic needle, which was really great because, of course, it was painless. People who are more strict than I am about medicine pointed out that if it didn’t get under the skin, it wouldn’t do any good, but I think you have to balance the loss of pain against the loss of benefit.