The hubby and I were over at a friend's house last weekend to do what any Red-Blooded American Female does during early August of years divisible by four: watch the Olympics, ogle the hot athletic men, and drink too much wine. Since hubby and I are among those Weird People Who Don't Have Cable TV, last Sunday was the first day of live Olympics coverage we had seen since 2008, and we took it in greedily, perhaps at the expense of being social and making conversation with our friends (but that's another story).
That afternoon's coverage happened to be the women's marathon. Now, I consider myself a runner (albeit a much slower, more awkward-looking one than the 80-lb women featured on Sunday's marathon broadcast). I run 4-5 times a week, have five marathons under my belt, and could happily debate someone on trail running vs street running for hours on end. I'm more knowledgeable and more interested in long-distance running than your average Joe. And yet, even I had to marvel at NBC's decision to broadcast the women's marathon IN ITS ENTIRETY last Sunday.
Having run five marathons myself, I am well aware that the event is far from riveting television viewing. These women do nothing but run -- seemingly effortlessly -- for over two hours straight. Occasionally a runner will take a swig from a water bottle, and that's the most action you'll see for 10 minutes at a time. Otherwise, there's nothing but two straight hours of watching wafer-thin women run on and on and on. These women are such amazing runners that they show almost no expression on their laser-focused faces and make even less superfluous motion with their robot-like bodies.
Even to those of us who have shuffled through a marathon and have some idea of just how fast these women are and how incredibly amazing what they do is, watching the full marathon on TV is about as exciting as watching the Weather Channel for 2 straight hours (maybe even less exciting, depending on what the weather is like that day). Marathons do not transfer well to television. The crowd excitement, the perseverance and determination of the athletes, the mind-blowing sustained speed at which their feet are pounding the pavement for 26.2 miles -- none of it is really felt or appreciated on TV. It's far less glamorous than the 200m sprinting events that are over in 25 seconds. Instead, the marathon just looks like a bunch of anorexic chicks out for a jog for a couple of hours.
Which is why I'm at a loss to understand why NBC felt compelled to show the entire marathon on its Olympics coverage on Sunday. I could understand periodic updates of the event, maybe where they show 2-3 minutes at a time occasionally (maybe the start, finish, any changes in leadership, and anyone dropping out from injury) in between other events. But over two full hours of marathon coverage? I'm left scratching my wine-addled head.
Perhaps there were no other scheduled events at that time for NBC to show. The simple solution to that is to intersperse interviews with Ryan Lochte (shirtless, preferably) and feature stories on other similarly attractive athletes with the marathon coverage. I guarantee not one single Red-Blooded American Woman would turn off the marathon coverage if it meant she would be rewarded with Olympic eye-candy every few minutes.
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