What would Jesus do? We’ve all heard that question with respect to various topics, including, What would Jesus drive? I began thinking: if Jesus had been a runner, what race would have been his specialty? Then I thought of others and, well, I just got carried away. Feel free to add to this list.
Jesus would have been a marathoner. I could see him running effortlessly in the arid hills of Galilee in sandals like those worn this century by the Tarahumara Indian runners of Mexico, and leaving the twelve disciples in the dust after the first Gatorade stop. Speaking of disciples, John would be a quarter-miler; he was first to the tomb, right? Martin Luther King Jr.’s best race would be the two-mile, exactly the distance from the Capitol to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Charles “Survival of the Fittest” Darwin would no doubt win his age group in the Ironman Triathlon. Euclid, the father of Geometry, would kick everyone’s butt in any race with a lot of curves since he would know to run the tangents. Eminem would be good at, what else, 8-miles. Columbus would start out in the New York City Marathon, take a wrong turn and end up in Washington D.C., then take credit for discovering the Marine Corps Marathon. Something tells me that no matter what race Neil Amstrong would run, he would always be the first. Aristotle said “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil,” which would make him a good candidate for an ultra, most likely the Badwater Ultramarathon. Based on his most famous symphony, Beethoven’s favorite distance would be 352 yard sprint (if you need help on that one, it’s a “fifth” of a mile). All those runs around the block in Philadelphia by Thomas Jefferson to clear his mind during the writing of the Declaration of Independence would make him a favorite in the 800-meters at the Penn Relays. Thoreau? A trail runner in the woods, that's a no-brainer. From his training on Mt. Sinai, Moses would no doubt be a favorite in the annual Mt. Washington road race. Marie Antionette would be fast, but unfortunately . . . not fast enough. Poet Robert Frost would do well in the 24-hour run since he has “miles to go before I sleep.” Ghandi would not be a fast runner because he would slow to let everyone finish before him. Similarly, Shakespeare would be another who would lag behind, based on his advice in Romeo and Juliet that “Slow and steady, they stumble that run fast.” And no matter what distance Charles Dickens would run, he would be like many of us – never satisfied with our results, even if we ran a pretty good race. To him, once he stopped the time on his runner’s watch after crossing the finish line, it would be “the best of times and the worst of times.”
Cute!
Posted by: Slim Jim | February 26, 2011 at 08:31 AM