Newsflash: Slow Economy, Faster Times?

Though I've always (mostly) been a "bloggers-should-publish-their-own-content" kind of guy, I thought I'd share an interesting piece of news I heard this morning on the radio.

On Only a Game's Saturday, July 18, 2009 radio broadcast, host Bill Littlefield interviewed Wall Street Journal writer Reed Albergotti regrading his recent article entitle "Fast Times for Jobless Runners."

Some of the salient points from article/interview (I tried my best to transcribe some teaser-type nuggets) include:

fast times for jobless runners fields in marathons are filling up faster than in recent years when the economy was better despite most people having less money and while past rends have shown that as marathons have become more popular, times have been getting slower... this year times have actually been getting faster

while more people are not necessarily applying to run the Boston marathon, more runners are hitting the BQ (Boston Qualifying) time, so theoretically getting the times to run in Boston

this improvement in overall marathon (and triathlon) finishing times cannot only be attributed to people who have been laid off, or have switched careers, simply running more, but also that they are recovering from long runs more fully...

without the need to alleviate the stress of the workday, runners are more likely to sleep better or not worry about resting the necessary time due to the reduced mental strain of a workday...

Some of the statistcal data used in identifying benchamrkl finsihing times was acquired via Athlinks.com, a Web site that tracks millions of race results. I had not heard of this site before, so I look forward to checking out that site as well as, despite the desire for better times, once again thank goodness that am am fortuanet enough to be employed.

Breathe in, breathe out… YOU AND I ARE ALIVE!