(Part 1)
So anyway, Mr. Levitt gave no sign of having read the post that he was objecting to. But he didn’t need to—he was prepared to object to the tone. Tome-policing is automatic for people his age who exclusively serve douchebags like themselves in their business operations.
I have been told Levitt is a really nice guy in person. And based on his postings, he seems like one. But if he can’t or won’t engage his brain, that means nothing. And actually, if I had to choose between only people who pretended to be nice online but are assholes in real life and people who are decent in real life but role-play online for approval, I would choose the first group; at least those people’s fantasy lives are tending to move their real ones in the right direction.
So with Ellie Pell and Levitt having established their pro-Wokish, anti-Beck of the Pack-style-reality credentials across multiple personality axes, the next logical move was for both of them to move to Boulder. Which they have.
Ellie announced early this month that she was moving here, evidently for her first full-time job since graduating from college eight years ago. She is working in food service. Now, I don’t know what her living arrangements are, but I know what the cost of living here is, and thanks to Ellie herself I know that she has no reason to have accumulated any personal savings besides being born into privilege (see screenshots in part 1). I also know that full-time work in her sector does not come with superior remuneration.
Combining these things with the simple fact that she’s white, accomplished (in-universe) female distance runner from Connecticut with an admitted eating disorder—which describes practically all such runners from that state, sadly—I’m guessing she is getting or at least received a nice boost to tote her weirdness to Boulder.
Because the world is transfixed by the notion of West Coast and East Coast rap culture, Ellie properly recognizes that the same is true of ultra culture.
Remember, she is the one providing all this fun fodder.
So, Ellie has advertised where she works, what her farts smell like, and that she’s looking for action. She’s probably already got a beard sleeping beside her.
Part of Levitt, a 2:59:40 marathoner, being a nice guy is his insatiable, and unfortunately common, hunger for letting others know he’s here and who he’s hanging with. He and Ellie neatly exemplify Boulder’s suckup culture.
Is Ellie Gazzellie really that surprised as a 2:44 marathoner that she was dropped by capable runners? Does Levitt really consider 7:00 pace to be moving, or is this all part of the heroic struggle to show other recreational runners that you get to rub dingleberries with elite athletes? You know, the athletes every American sports fan immediately recognizes because they’re such a big part of the global athletics scene.
Also, I guess a Young Boys Club is fine with Ellie.
Look, there’s nothing inherently harmless about being a dumbass, a kiss-ass, or both, even if it won’t get you what you believe it will. But this has consequential results. One of these, as alluded to in part 1, is getting on the “That’s a disallowed viewpoint” train, usually unthinkingly, and being a part of a broad, unseen committee that censors people, often for merely being right and scuttling or completely exploding some Wokish bullshit narrative.
This crowd is just as fragile as can be and determined to stay that way.
Levitt tweeted this the other day:
I guess “Hear Ye, Hear Ye” is the wrong word choice here, but I agree: Bigotry is not okay. I’m taking the liberty of expanding “antisemitism” to “bigotry” because I am crediting Levitt with being able to consider people other than himself.
Levitt had just tweeted this two days earlier:
I will soon be deconstructing the myth that Alison Desir is a good influence or a decent person at great length. I gave Levitt a prod in this direction when he kept tagging adidas, a rejoinder he ignored:
I remain appalled by the breathtakingly whimsical sanctioning of white-male-bashing, typically by white soy-bugpeople of various genders, within libtard circles. And running now exists entirely within that set of circles as far as the media are concerned.
Witness the antics of Zoe Rom, Trail Runner’s editor-in-absentia.
It’s fine that she openly discriminates against white males in her professional capacity, since Outside, Inc., the “publisher” of Trail Runner, decided that was cool policy back in 2018.
I had a really useful story killed for its author and subjects being too white and too male, and Molly Mirhashem, the rhetorically hapless and diabolically shitty editor of Outside Online and another nitwit of privilege, wouldn’t even admit it. These people are going to be on the other end of something similar one day and will never see it coming, so myopic are they after a lifetime of “working” in sweats from parental homes.
What’s less fine to me is that Rom’s commitment to social justice ends with her tiresome attempts at poetic Instagrammery. Rom is a client of the Roches. David Roche is the whitest man alive, has a law degree, is married to a white physician. He also doesn’t know a damned thing and can’t write for beans, but the real issue is: Why not assign Roche’s column to young, undiscovered writers of color, or at least white Woke women, who could use the money and the platform? Sure, no one fucking reads Trail Runner anymore except for me and Lize Brittin, but she could at least follow through at a surface level with her commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Apart from inflicting social damages, runners like Ellie and especially Levitt add to the database of locals who are probably just going to flail in their races from here on out. These suckup types quickly find homes in groups and meta-groups of standing wannabes, and they usually run north of the Boulder Reservoir so they can See and Be Seen by the elite-runner folks I mentioned who are on ESPN all the time, or at least after serious doping scandals.
This progresses to most of the wannabes always running in groups, often of six or eight or more, which means that maybe a third or a quarter of those present are doing the kind of workout they should be doing that day. This solid-yet-haphazard regimen usually includes no more than 70 or 80 miles a week—remember, these are often people who moved here to do things like qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials—and a lot of drinking, often after fun-runs.
These types put in their long runs, and they put in plenty of (usually miscalibrated) speed sessions. Many of them never even figure out the conversion from sea level for any duration of effort until they head to sea level to race. Most of them have done no steady work at adjusted marathon pace and don’t care to even when they’ve seen this work for the people they like to be seen with. Then they travel en masse to be in the same races as true elites and often wind up bombing. But the craft beer is fine, and the rent (or mortgage) keeps getting paid somehow, so many of these sorts are here to stay. Their names are unlikely to appear on local plaques, at least as distinguished honorees.
Some of these runners, in addition to being socially stunted at a deep level, are squandering considerable if not world-class talent with this “living of the life.” I certainly don’t care about this, but you’d think a few of them would, because soon they’ll be my age and wondering what happened amid “the life” other than beer tabs and DNFs in distant cities.
You be you, and keep shouting that men can give birth during certain ultradistance events at certain latitudes if you follow The Science if that’s what gives you a charge in 2022. Soon it’ll be something else, and you’ll still be too into doing you to remember what an asshole you were to people who didn’t ask for it while treating those who deserved censure like royalty because it earned you “likes.”
Why am I here in Boulder myself? I could live and work anywhere. My own reason for coming here for the first time in 2009 was indirectly related to running at best, and that’s what still keeps me here even if the years have worn some of the edges away, creating softer aspects here and sharper ones there. I struggled mightily in this city, took time away to get better, came back, and am perfectly happy with my decision to stay indefinitely. There are people in my life cagily scheduling things for me to do significantly in the future in the basic hope of keeping me alive.
Things are not quite that grim. The world is in fact going to shit, but in the meantime, I have obtained a professional license that will allow me to earn decent money and not think about “running” (I may still think about running). This has been clear for some time, but after making a humble but steady living almost exclusively as a writer for close to fifteen years, the industry has changed, and the new creds make it more official. And really, it was a good run, basically being a digital handyman and “working” in a supine position.
But I don’t wish to taint a good rant with personal updates. It’s just frustrating to watch so many goddamn people waste their brains and their potential by propagating bullshit they know is false, and it’s a sign of both the economic and sociological times that people with such an enormous gap between what they understand and what they proclaim to understand are being drawn to Boulder.
Just don’t be an asshole, and we old white codgers can accommodate you as we yell “left!” on the creek paths.