Twin Cities Marathon Canceled Due to Everyone Nowadays Being Big Crybabies, According to Hard-as-Nails Old Guy
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Organizers canceled yesterday’s Twin Cities Marathon due to everyone nowadays being weak, soft, and “big crybabies,” according to a local runner.
“We’ve become a nation of wusses,” said Walt Kowalski, 78, a retired steelworker, former U.S. Marine, and veteran of 63 marathons. “It’s a sad state of affairs.”
The Minneapolis race was scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. local time; organizers emailed participants around 5:30 a.m. announcing the cancellation, citing a forecast of record-setting heat and saying that “conditions … do not allow a safe event for runners, supporters and volunteers.”
“Give me a [expletive] break,” Kowalski told Dumb Runner in a video call, while doing one-arm push-ups. “When I was in the service, we would do 20-mile marches with field packs and rifles, over mountains, in 100-degree weather—in combat boots!”
“Back in my day, we weren’t coddled all the time,” he said. “We didn’t cancel marathons because of hot weather, or quit smoking because it was ‘bad’ for us, or wear seatbelts, or have new moles checked out, or wear helmets on our motorcycles, or get colonoscopies, or have smoke alarms on every floor of our homes.”
“And we turned out fine,” he added.
Asked whether he was familiar with the term “survivorship bias,” Kowalski scoffed.
“Back in my day, we didn’t talk about ‘bias’ all the time, either,” he said. “And somehow I surived.”
