So a 400-pound man ran a marathon. And?

Several people have mentioned this to me, so I had to look into it.  Indeed, a 400-pound man ran the LA marathon. 

Should I be insulted that when I say I'm marathon training people think of a 400-pound man? 

Yes, I'm sure that everyone who has mentioned it to me is trying to be encouraging.  "If a really, really fat guy can do it, you should have no trouble!"  But that's kind of a dumb thing to say.

This isn't just any 400-pound man.  He's a sumo wrestler.  A really accomplished sumo wrestler.  He works out by wrestling with trees, and while that doesn't put him at the same fitness level of even your less-than-average marathon runner it puts him leaps and bounds ahead of your average, inactive morbidly obese person (and I say that as somebody who's just now moving away from being an average, inactive morbidly obese person).  Plus, this isn't even his first marathon.  "Sumo wrestler runs second marathon and shaves two hours off his time" doesn't sound as amazing as "400 pound man runs marathon."  None of the news stories touch on how much preparation he went through, but this is a guy who knows a little bit about training for an event (even if his usual training mostly means wrestling with trees), so I would imagine that he didn't just show up at the race expecting that his wrestling experience would carry him through.  Especially not on his second go at it.  He wasn't out to prove that you don't have to be fit to run a marathon.  He was out to prove that he was fit enough, despite his weight, to complete the task.  There's a big difference.

I totally give props to this guy for taking on the marathon.  Twice.  I don't even begrudge him the desire to get in the record books for doing it.  At least he picked a marathon with an appropriate time limit (i.e. none). And if his story inspires others to get up off the couch and start moving, great!

But I hate to think that the message people are taking from this story is that marathons don't have to be about fitness.  This story shouldn't suggest that it's possible for your average obese human with no history of serious physical activity to just get up one day and run a marathon. It shouldn't make people think that everyone who seriously prepares for a race and pays attention to the condition of their body are just making too big of a deal about it, since obviously some 400-pound guy did it.  But I'm afraid that's how some people are reading it. 

Sure, I'm not going to be ultra-fit by October.  I'm not going to be skinny.  I'm also not going to finish with anything close to what most marathoners would consider a good time, unless some kind of strange miracle occurs.  But I will be as fit as I can be by then, as light as I can be by then, and finish with the best time I can manage.  And if I decide to do another one after all this, I'll be even more fit for the next one.  I don't want to be part of some movement to prove that unfit, fat people can run races, too.  I want to prove that I don't have to be unfit and fat.  The point isn't that I don't have to be like a "real" athlete to do the same athletic things, the point is to become a "real" athlete.

So, yeah, I don't really find it encouraging for people to point out to me that "some 400-pound guy just ran a marathon."  Good for him.  I'm sure he worked really hard.