The most blatant example yet of climate hypocrisy in this unsustainable version of citizen distance running

Mass marathons like Boston have become obsolete, as roving showcases of upper-class narcissism salted with cheaters of color have no role in a world concerned with decency, never mind global warming

RUN (powered by Outside) published an article today by Mallory Arnold titled “Your 2024 Boston Marathon Medal Will Be Made of Recycled Materials.” This was nice to learn. I wonder what everyone else’s will be made of, especially those who actually intend to register for and complete the 2024 race event?

There are several layers of absurdity in play here. Chief among these is the stipulation that anyone involved with luring tens of thousands of people traveling either by automobile or airliner just to jog around for a few hours really cares one bit about anthropogenic climate change, at least among those who believe that carbon emissions are its primary driver. The whole concept of such an event in the face of a “climate crisis” is incoherent, though decidedly less so than the Indianapolis 500. The demoralized Boston Athletic Association can host its increasingly idiot-packed, commercialized, and watered-down for-profit annual parade if it must, and it can make sure to fly in zillions of plastic water bottles for these beaming zombies that otherwise would be unnecessary to the city and planet. But these races should just stop with their obviously insincere environmental overtures.

I know, I know—these managers and directors and spokesclowns at Big Events all have to play their stupid roles in the multi-pronged globalist sham. Nevertheless, fuck everyone involved with the production of any big-city American marathon anyway. These people are taking money to say things they don’t mean and offering ever-more-degraded products. This includes Chris Lotsbom, the Boston Marathon communications director and therefore debased by vocational obligation, who is quoted in Arnold’s story:

In recent years, the B.A.A. has made sustainability a focus of our events. Working with partners, participants, vendors, and volunteers, we’re continuously emphasizing the importance of fostering a more sustainable event from start to finish. When the opportunity to create our finisher medals from recycled steel and ribbons locally with partner Ashworth Awards came about, it was a natural next step.

I have an idea for this posturing prick: Drop the medals for anyone who doesn’t break three hours, which is barely moving in a straight line anyway. Actually, make that cut-off 2:37:18, as that’s sub-six-minute pace, a concept at least a few American minds can still process. And then leave your role so that some new posturing asshole can seize and abuse it.

Actually, we* should just cancel the Boston Marathon. And then we should raze Harvard University and Boston University, perhaps turning their remains into a strategic mixture of affordable housing and affordable topless nightclubs. We should certainly cancel the city’s openly racist cunt of a mayor. We should in fact cancel the whole ruined city once it thaws out for the spring and really starts to stink, and then we should plow it right over the former Combat Zone and any bitchy police officers and right into the Atlantic Ocean—already filled with two centuries of Yankee garbage anyway. And as a closing ceremonial gesture, we should incinerate Logan Airport, easily the worst facility of its type in North America. And we must cancel those wicked frickin’ stupid accents. (You go first.)

Anyway, the next layer of absurdity is the bragging about a switch to “sustainable” medals. Why did the custom of handing these things out ever develop anyway? Anyone who primarily runs marathons to collect medals isn’t someone the world should be catering to in any way. I’ve seen (and kept) some nice road-race gimcrack myself, but I wouldn’t have cared had I not been handed any of this crap. The idea that a medal should be given to anyone over the age of 10 or under the age of 80 for simply finishing a 26.2-mile run or walk could only have arisen in a nation rife with avaricious, overstimulated, underappreciated waterheads. But that’s one of the joys of American capitalism: If you merely pretend that it is valuable, the rich will soon want it.

I’ll let the final layer of absurdity speak for itself, although I’ve helped by oomphasizing certain bits of text:

Ashworth Awards has been the manufacturer of the Boston Marathon medals for 42 years, and this year, it’s business as usual, but with a green twist. The coveted medallions will be made with 100 percent recycled materials—the medals with recycled steel and the ribbons out of recycled plastic, mostly water bottles.

Morgan Ashworth, chief product officer of Ashworth Awards, has been in her current position for four years, but grew up in the family business her grandfather started back in 1965.

Ashworth ran Boston for the first time in 2021, but her race was tragically cut short when she broke her foot on mile seven. Not to be discouraged, she plans on taking on the race again as part of her quest to complete all six World Marathon Majors.

It took some digging, but I found a photo that may explain the unfortunate orthopedic trauma that Morgan Ashworth—who, appropriately or not, has the ultimate rich woman’s name—suffered in 2021 at mile seven. The angle makes it difficult to appreciate the severity of the impact.

As for Ashworth’s quest to run all six World Marathon Majors races, she must really feel like she’s racked up a lot carbon credits with the Boston Marathon’s shift to medals made from recycled materials. Those races are held in Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, and Tokyo.

Maybe Ashworth intends to fly to these races on aircraft assembled not from recyclable materials but from recycled materials, such as anything made by Boeing since the company’s 1997 ingestion of McDonnell Douglas. Maybe she agrees with Willie Soon and The Ethical Skeptic that carbon emissions aren’t even appreciably driving the warming of the planet. (Not long after I wrote about Soon’s conversation with Tucker Carlson, he was “cancelled”—and like everyone else with a valid but inconvenient opinion, it was all for wanting to have an open scientific debate. Bill Gates, who himself consists of nearly 200 soft pounds of non-recyclable soy greed, should be launched directly toward the sun in a huge Styrofoam Big Mac container.)

Or maybe Morgan Ashworth just doesn’t care any more about climate change than Zoe Rom, David and Megan Roche, or any other person of visibility in the running world crowing about how everyone needs to confront the crisis—now—before it’s too late and we all die suddenly of hyperthermic or migrant-induced myocarditis.

These people are pathetic, but such are the world’s incentives thanks to the perverts who hold the purse-strings. I’m just glad I got to run the Boston Marathon when it still meant something and was many years away from being hijacked by racists, whiners, and uncontrollable liars of gargantuan adiposity, with all of these glory-hounds intent on devouring an undeserved share of a cultural pie—one that now reeks of sickness and scamming from 42,195 meters away anyway, primarily thanks to these lovely invaders’ own joyously infantile and raucous befouling of marathons and every other institution in sight.