9. RACE AMENITIES

This category includes race T-shirt, finisher’ red finishers certificate, adequate and efficient finish area, ease of sweatbag retrieval, showers, postrace refreshments, awards oy taffles, results Postcard, results book, and so on.

[Possible points: 250 HRM score: a

experienced and adequate | in number?

[Possible points: 100 HRM score: 81] _

TOTAL SCORE FOR HUMBOLDT REDWOODS MARATHON: 809 points (out of 1,000)

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May/June 1998 HUMBOLDT REDWOODS MARATHON ® 113

Adventure Running At Its WORST!

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Letters

WILL THE REAL PHOTO PLEASE STAND UP?

Of the many great articles published inM&B so far, Julia Emmons’s piece, “The Last Marathoner” (July/August 1997), has been one of our readers’ favorites. Julia’s article took us behind the scenes at the Atlanta Games and offered an exclusive look at the men’s and women’s Olympic marathons and the remarkable story of Afghanistan’s A. Baser Wasigi. Busy directing the men’s race, Julia could not take photos herself so, as Julia explains, “many friends shared copies of their photos with me to keep as personal souvenirs.” Dr. Perry Julien and Dale Allen both sent Julia photos of Wasiqi breaking the homemade tape at the finish line. In the time since the photo was published in M&B, Julia has learned that it was Dale Allen’s and NOT Perry Julien’s photo (as previously credited) that appeared in our magazine. Julia writes, “I did not ID the photos as carefully as I should have for, at the time, I had no idea I would be writing the article and using a photograph.” We join Julia in apologizing to Dale for the mix-up. If you missed the photo the Jirst time, here it is again, twice.

—M&B managing editor Jan Seeley

PERRY JULIEN

CHILDREN RUNNING MARATHONS

I am a middle school teacher in the Pico/Union/Korea townarea of downtown Los Angeles and have been coaching a student marathon training program at Berendo Middle School for five years. As aresult of this, since

LETTERS ™ 115

1993 over 120 students from my school have completed the LA Marathon. This is all possible due to a program called Students Run L.A. (SRLA). Founded 10 years ago by three continuation school principals and a professor from California State University Northridge, the program takes “atrisk” students and uses training for the marathon to teach them such things as discipline, hard work, and goal setting. Over the years the popularity of the program has increased, and last year approximately 1,200 SRLA students completed the LA Marathon.

SRLA has been studied, and the benefits are many. The students are more likely to attend class on a regular basis, their self-esteem is higher compared to nonparticipating students, and their fitness level is far better than that of other students. This program also gives the students an alternative to gang membership (the particular neighborhood in which Berendo Middle School is located is in the border of at least eight different gang turfs).

My youngest participants were 11 years old when they completed the LA Marathon (they ran 3:48 and 4:33, respectively). My two fastest boys completed the marathon in 3:17 and 3:18, respectively. While the few studies in the area of children running marathons still contradict each other, I believe the SRLA program brings about so many benefits to the runners, the schools, and the communities that I would be hard-pressed to cancel my

program on the basis of inconclusive medical evidence.

Sharon Elm

Berendo Middle School

DON’T CRITICIZE DOCTORS

I am greatly offended by the editorial

What you say may certainly be true of some individual physicians, but to condemna whole profession as greedy and uncaring is inappropriate and inaccurate. As an example, consider how many physicians volunteer their time for high school athletics and certainly for marathons (e.g., Boston, California International, etc.).

You are wrong! There is a great awareness and appreciation among physicians of the importance of physical activity as a component of good health. In my considerable experience I know that most physicians encourage their patients to follow good health habits—no smoking, well-balanced diet, appropriate weight, and a sensible exercise regime. That this was not true years ago is not unexpected. There is anatural evolution of knowledge based on experimentation and experience in any field. Are we using the same marathon training programs as thirty years ago? Doesn’t every profession have its Lydiards?

How about an editorial on journalistic ethics? Perhaps you can use as an example your “book excerpt” of

Joe Henderson’s Marathon Training: The Proven 100-Day Program for Success. What a coincidence that from among many excellent running books the one you chose to promote in this issue is published by the same publisher as Marathon & Beyond and also advertises on the inside back cover of your magazine. Larry M. Lieb, MD Carmichael, Calif.

FromM&B editor Rich Benyo: “Relative to your comments on the editorial, let me make several points:

1. My comments are, indeed, as you say, true of some individual physicians. In fact, they are true of more than a few. With the tightening of the reins in the world of medicine (and let’s fact it, medicine and education are the last major industries to have the reins pulled in) so that power and Pay are more controlled, anumber of what might be called “marginal” physicians (i.e., physicians who see medicine as ajob and nota profession) are leaving the profession. In some specialties the numbers are staggering and auger grave shortages some years down the road. To say, however, that I condemned a whole profession is to have read only portions of the editorial. I was very careful to be specific, that is, “…some doctors charged for services rendered to patients who had been dead for years…” I did not fail to recognize the contributions of a hard-core cadre of physicians who take the time not only to promote

physical activity but also to champion it when such stands were not popular among the medical community (which, by the way, was not all that long ago). The editorial lauds the American Medical Joggers Association and the American College of Sports Medicine, as well as citing individual pioneers: Ken Cooper, Jack Scaff, Thaddeus Kostrubala, William Morgan, Mike Sachs, Bill Glasser, George Sheehan, Peter Wood, Dave Martin.

Perhaps the physicians you interactwith “.. encourage their patients to follow good habits . . .,” but the majority still have not taken a firm stand on that area and seem incredibly reluctant to firmly advise their patients toward a more healthy lifestyle, even though they (the physicians) still hold a position of regard and respect in the lives of their patients and even though their admonitions would be more likely followed than all the admonitions from fitness specialists combined. If there were such an overwhelming support for healthy habits and lifestyles, over the years physicians as a whole would have wielded their considerable power to create more wide-ranging and aggressive fitness and wellness departments in hospitals. What’s the budget of the fitness and wellness departmentat your local hospital relative to other departments—if it even has one?

2. Are we using the same marathon training programs as thirty years

LETTERS m 117