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Friday, November 02, 2012

A fictional portrayal of running injuries

So this time of the year is historically a bit slow on the site, although this weekend the New York City Marathon will be run in spite of the recent carnage brought to the region by Hurricane Sandy. Interestingly the decision to go ahead with the race has sparked a bit of debate, with maybe the starkest quote against the decision coming from the Staten Island borough president: " “My God. What we have here is terrible, a disaster. If they want to race, let them race with themselves. This is no time for a parade.”  

That could be considered a bit harsh, but on the ground the perception is likely different, so it is probably understandable why he thinks the use of city resources for the race is frivolous.  But nevertheless the race is set to go off as planned, and the part that is getting less coverage is that the race activities have been pared back.  For example they canceled the opening ceremony on Friday and the 5km race on Saturday, and they also revised their cancellation policy to accommodate those whose travel plans were fouled by the weather.

As normal, we will analyse the race in real time providing we can access a live feed and/or the splits, so watch the site for updates followed by our standard race report.

But the real reason for this post is comic relief, and to share a link our friends at LetsRun.com posted the other day.  We posted it on our Facebook page, and it has received lots of views over there so we figured we would share it for site readers, too.  In the words of one reader on our Facebook page, "72 hours of YouTube video is uploaded every minute and that is a real 3.5 minute gem. . ."!

Those of you in academia who have experience with the peer review process might have come across the video spoof of that process.  It first appeared several years ago, and since then a few different versions have been posted, as well as spoofs of other topics using the same video clip---"Hitler finds out Osama bin Laden is dead,"  "Hitler finds out Obama won," 
and also, "Hitler finds out Chuck Norris is coming," just to name a few.

The clip is from the German film "Downfall," and depicts a scene in which Hitler is forced to realize his defeat.  German speakers will have to try to ignore the audio and focus on the spoof sub-titles, but here is one of the original spoofs of the peer-review process.  Once you have picked yourself up off the floor and have stopped laughing, try going back and reading the two most popular comments on YouTube, they are almost equally as funny!


Interestingly, the original clip from the movie with real subtitles is also on YouTube, and the uploader of that clip actually mentions it was all the parodies that made him watch the real film!

And the most recent spoof added on October 26 pokes fun at previously injured runners everywhere.  So if you have ever been injured, especially in the run up to a big event or goal, this will resonate particularly well.

Language alert:  there is foul language in the subtitles (not the original German), so if you don't like seeing the f-bomb on your screen then this is not for you.

Enjoy, and good luck to any readers who will be running on Sunday!