Author Topic: EP177: Usurpers  (Read 47860 times)

ieDaddy

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Reply #50 on: October 01, 2008, 04:17:22 PM
One thing I did not totally get; It was stated that the shoes stolen from the modded kids were designed for their running style, right? So how did King know which person shared his exact running style to allow him to get the benefits of using them? Am I off on the idea that the shies were made for each individual, or was it just the knowledge that he stole them that gave him a psychological edge?

Drawing back to my days of wrestling and football - if you study your opponents well enough, you'll start to know their styles.  I watched hours of film and could tell you what moves a player would make or what plays a coach would call on 3rd and 7.  If King was walking the course day and night and had been around these kids for a year in one form or another, I'm betting he could tell pretty quickly which ones matched his running style - besides which, exactly how many running styles are there?  probably a dozen or so - it may not have been a perfect fit, but it's probably better than a pair of cross-trainers.

Quote
Wouldn't the rich parents who want to genetically modify their children opt for higher intelligence rather than physical characteristics? It appears to me that the lower income segment of today's society is the one that is looking for the physical based scholarships.

My thoughts on this one is that rich may not have meant "wealthy" and they only had a certain amount to spend on their kids.  We all want the best for our kids, but when it comes time to buy them a car not a lot of them get a Hummer or Ferarri - so it was probably a pick of what enhancements they can afford.

As to why physical over mental?  This story seemed to be in the near future.  Physical characteristics are easy to manipulate.  We know what genes are responsible to a degree for fast muscle twitch, bigger muscles, strength, etc.  Not to start a flaming war (oh, those words...*sigh*) but you can isolate certain racial characteristics and certain genomes seem to have a larger proportion of physical strength as exhibited by what you might see in the sports world.  Or to put it a little differently - if you have two tall people and they produce a child - chances are the kid is going to be tall.  If you have two genius parents with a kid - there's no guarantee the kid will be the next Newton.

I'm sure trying to manipulate a kid's intelligence would be extremely difficult, especially as how we've not really even mapped out the workings of the brain.




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Reply #51 on: October 01, 2008, 06:57:14 PM
  One thing I did not totally get; It was stated that the shoes stolen from the modded kids were designed for their running style, right? So how did King know which person shared his exact running style to allow him to get the benefits of using them? Am I off on the idea that the shies were made for each individual, or was it just the knowledge that he stole them that gave him a psychological edge?
 

I missed the part where he stole the shoes?  ???

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Reply #52 on: October 01, 2008, 07:07:47 PM
I loved it...  The athletic theme is something that has become important to me in the past few years.  I'm afraid I'm the standard physics type who saw a bit too much of the great indoors.  More I have become good friends with a professional athlete and have come to appreciate her focus and her intensity.  The story reminded me of her ...

It turns out that unless you are really good and can find corporate sponsorship, doing well in many sports means having wealthy parents or finding a spouse of means.  Most athletes give up quite a bit of what many of us enjoy following their own path.  In some ways her journey is similar to mine in physics (although physics pays more)

Since this crowd loves stories I offer a beautiful little true story.

Colleen struggles trying to find sponsors - anything from a company to $25 from a fan.  A few months ago she was scouted to appear on the TV show Wipeout - a strange show with a Japanese flavor that has people running an obstacle course.  The winner collects some money and some of the others may get a bit of exposure.  She agreed and was injured in the process.  I blogged her appearance, proud friend that I am, and went on.  But an amazing thing happened.  Someone stumbled onto my blog, read the post and showed it to her daughter.  A comment was made and hearts melted.  My wife collected the various threads and guest posted to Colleen's blog... 

http://www.6footsix.com/my_weblog/2008/09/the-silver-lining-of-bounce-crash-and-splash.html
 





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Reply #53 on: October 01, 2008, 09:08:14 PM
Initially, I found this story hard to understand - it took me a couple of minutes to adjust to the writing style and I missed out on some of the background. But once that passed, I really did enjoy the writing a lot.

But from a storyline, rather than writing, point of view, I didn't enjoy this story so much. While I go to the gym regularly, and I enjoy working out quite a lot, I am not a sports fan. I enjoy performing physical exercise, not watching it, nor particularly hearing about it. Now, there have been sports stories I liked, but those are stories that use sports as a setting. This story boiled down an entire class struggle into an athletic competition, and I couldn't relate to that. Worse, I found the fact that King has to resort to physical violence at several points to severly detract from my enjoyment. I can, to some degree, appreciate the ideal of an athletic competition, but I cannot sympathize with the "let's do anything we can to win" attitude of this story. The fact that the opponents were cheating in a different way did not make King's behavior more appealing to me.

Plus, "if you just want it bad enough, you can overcome any physical barrier" is a somewhat overplayed trope.

So, overall, well-written, but not my cup of tea.



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Reply #54 on: October 01, 2008, 10:44:25 PM
One thing I did not totally get; It was stated that the shoes stolen from the modded kids were designed for their running style, right? So how did King know which person shared his exact running style to allow him to get the benefits of using them? Am I off on the idea that the shies were made for each individual, or was it just the knowledge that he stole them that gave him a psychological edge?

Drawing back to my days of wrestling and football - if you study your opponents well enough, you'll start to know their styles.  I watched hours of film and could tell you what moves a player would make or what plays a coach would call on 3rd and 7.  If King was walking the course day and night and had been around these kids for a year in one form or another, I'm betting he could tell pretty quickly which ones matched his running style - besides which, exactly how many running styles are there?  probably a dozen or so - it may not have been a perfect fit, but it's probably better than a pair of cross-trainers.

Quote
Wouldn't the rich parents who want to genetically modify their children opt for higher intelligence rather than physical characteristics? It appears to me that the lower income segment of today's society is the one that is looking for the physical based scholarships.

My thoughts on this one is that rich may not have meant "wealthy" and they only had a certain amount to spend on their kids.  We all want the best for our kids, but when it comes time to buy them a car not a lot of them get a Hummer or Ferarri - so it was probably a pick of what enhancements they can afford.

As to why physical over mental?  This story seemed to be in the near future.  Physical characteristics are easy to manipulate.  We know what genes are responsible to a degree for fast muscle twitch, bigger muscles, strength, etc.  Not to start a flaming war (oh, those words...*sigh*) but you can isolate certain racial characteristics and certain genomes seem to have a larger proportion of physical strength as exhibited by what you might see in the sports world.  Or to put it a little differently - if you have two tall people and they produce a child - chances are the kid is going to be tall.  If you have two genius parents with a kid - there's no guarantee the kid will be the next Newton.

I'm sure trying to manipulate a kid's intelligence would be extremely difficult, especially as how we've not really even mapped out the workings of the brain.



I figure the shoes were just an upgrade over the generic shoes he'd end up wearing if not for that. It seemed to me like a classical battle tale where someone steals the opposing side's armor when they have no other recourse. That he modifies the shoes externally implies he has changed them to suit his running style, too.

As for gene mods, he says they went with EPO and testosterone, basically the same performance enhancers we have now only triggered internally and therefore undetectable as they're produced naturally by the body.

Manipulating intelligence? Well, that doesn't work for a lot of reasons. One, this story doesn't work if the rich parents turn their kids into Math Bowl champions instead of XC runners. Two, manipulating intelligence in the near future seems unlikely due to the complicated and diverse mechanics of intelligence, as alluded to in the story itself by the risk involved in nerve work to limit the brain's perception of pain. Three, from the perspective of this story gene mod work is a method of sports enhancement in its current stage, and would not be extended to intelligence upgrades in such a nascent state.



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Reply #55 on: October 02, 2008, 03:35:11 AM

It's a storyteller's proverb that in the course of a long and active lifetime, you will play all the parts in a great story.  For me, this was a great story.  I've been the kid confronting economic disadvantage, I'm involved in an endurance sport and I'm currently a suburban parent, wrestling with all the questions of what you do for you child, what you leave for the child to do, and what you leave to plain chance.  It was amazing to find so many of my personal struggles rolled into a single narrative. Thanks, Steve.

As for sports being pointless, yes they are, in a way.  My sport is brevets -- non-competitive, long-distance bicyling events where the objective is to ride a pre-determined course along a series of checkpoints within a time limit.  The short courses are 200 kilometers (125 miles) and the longest ones are the 1,200 kilometer (750 mile) monsters with 90-hour time limits, like the quadrennial Paris-Brest-Paris event.  There are no places, no podiums, no prizes and trust me, nobody outside a tiny group of cyclists cares. So in that sense, it's about as pointless as you can get. But for me, the lack of extrinsic reward is one of the best things about it. 

I forget where I heard it, but my favorite endurance quotes says something to the effect of, "Edurance training is fundamentally simple.  You go out, you hit the wall, and the wall moves back a few meters.  Then you rest and recover and go out and hit the wall again."  At the risk of lapsing into complete cliche', it's knowing how to move the wall that's the real prize.  Finding within myself the ability to stay with a task for the sake of the task itself, discovering how to make myself do what I don't feel like doing, and learning to suffer because it is required by the activity are the things that bring me back to the bike year after year. 

Over at Podcastle, one of the fables ended with the moral: "Everybody knows better. That's the problem, not the solution."  Endurance training can help you develop the mental tools to do what you know to be better, even if there's some pain involved.  As such, it can be part of the solution.  At least that's how it's worked out for me.

"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


ajames

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Reply #56 on: October 02, 2008, 10:12:27 AM
I am not sure how this is going to sound but her goes anyway. Wouldn't the rich parents who want to genetically modify their children opt for higher intelligence rather than physical characteristics? It appears to me that the lower income segment of today's society is the one that is looking for the physical based scholarships.

The Tarzan speak ruined the story for me.

It's possible.  I'm sure some of them would.  But I think there are still a bunch of rich parents who have their egos tied to sports for whatever reason (they played and failed/suceeded themselves, living vicariously through their children, or just want that kind of glory) that I was able to buy into it.

And don't forget the rich parents who MADE their millions in sports.



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Reply #57 on: October 02, 2008, 01:55:30 PM
I am not sure how this is going to sound but her goes anyway. Wouldn't the rich parents who want to genetically modify their children opt for higher intelligence rather than physical characteristics? It appears to me that the lower income segment of today's society is the one that is looking for the physical based scholarships.

Three answers:

- maybe there isn't yet IQ-boosting technology, or it isn't yet safe enough for bourgeois parents to risk it on their kids,

- maybe there is IQ-boosting technology, and the parents did get it for their kids, but it wasn't mentioned because it wasn't relevant to the story,

- as the story points out (and as I think is true generally) talent, whether natural or artificial, only gets you so far: you need hard work to really get anywhere difficult.  So maybe the rich parents made the decision that even if they boost their kids' intelligence, they'll still be too lazy to compete intellectually, but they'll be able to succeed physically.



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Reply #58 on: October 02, 2008, 02:13:04 PM
I think someone mentioned this above, but are we sure the "rich" parents are actually rich? The race was for a scholarship, after all. Why would a rich kid need it?

Maybe physical gene enhancement is relatively cheap, so that it's a tactic middle class parents use to get their kids into really expensive schools, while poorer people like King can't afford it. From his perspective, the white kids are rich, but maybe they're "nice houses in the suberbs and parents in middle management" rich, not "mansions and CEO parents" rich.



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Reply #59 on: October 02, 2008, 06:42:01 PM
I am not sure how this is going to sound but her goes anyway. Wouldn't the rich parents who want to genetically modify their children opt for higher intelligence rather than physical characteristics? It appears to me that the lower income segment of today's society is the one that is looking for the physical based scholarships.

The Tarzan speak ruined the story for me.

Can you imagine the number of people who would get committed to insane asylums if super intelligence could be bought?  My brain never stops running at 100mph.  It's hard enough to deal with that when you've grown up with it.  Dump it on someone who hasn't learned to cope and see how many people just crack.



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Reply #60 on: October 02, 2008, 08:30:49 PM
Ajames nailed the style and Batman did it better and in shorter bursts.

The fictional story of King pales compared to the true story of Dean Karnazes, the Ultramarathon Man.  Read his book and you'll double the distances you run, just out of shame.  This man ran 350 miles in 80 hours and 44 minutes, ran 50 marathons in 50 consecutive days, and ran a marathon at the South Pole!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Karnazes

Final Verdict: I'll read Miller's Dark Knight while on the treadmill before listening to this again.



Windup

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Reply #61 on: October 03, 2008, 12:03:08 AM

I think someone mentioned this above, but are we sure the "rich" parents are actually rich? The race was for a scholarship, after all. Why would a rich kid need it?

Maybe physical gene enhancement is relatively cheap, so that it's a tactic middle class parents use to get their kids into really expensive schools, while poorer people like King can't afford it. From his perspective, the white kids are rich, but maybe they're "nice houses in the suberbs and parents in middle management" rich, not "mansions and CEO parents" rich.


That's how I took it.  "Rich" is a massively relative term -- it depends mostly on who your neighbors are.  This comes up frequently in the Wall Street Journal's Wealth Report blog.  If you live next door to "vacation mansions" and people who talk about the cost of maintaining a megayacht, even millions of dollars in income and tens of millions of dollars in assets can make you feel like a poor cousin.  It was clear to me that King came from a household that would regard what I think of as my relatively modest suburban existence as "rich" by contrast.

Face it, if you've got an Internet connection and enough leisure time to mess around with Escape Pod, you're probably in the richest 1% of all people who have ever lived, as measured by access to health care, cultural and entertainment opportunities, ability to travel, education, sanitation, etc.  And by those measures, probably the top 10%-20% of those alive right now.  One of those things I should probably keep more firmly in mind than I often do.


"My whole job is in the space between 'should be' and 'is.' It's a big space."


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Reply #62 on: October 03, 2008, 12:31:57 AM
I think someone mentioned this above, but are we sure the "rich" parents are actually rich? The race was for a scholarship, after all. Why would a rich kid need it?

Maybe physical gene enhancement is relatively cheap, so that it's a tactic middle class parents use to get their kids into really expensive schools, while poorer people like King can't afford it. From his perspective, the white kids are rich, but maybe they're "nice houses in the suberbs and parents in middle management" rich, not "mansions and CEO parents" rich.

The race isn't for a scholarship, it's for the state championship. King is unsure of his scholarship prospects, but has the hope that by winning states over gene-dopers (and it is alluded to throughout the story that some people are quite aware of its prevalence among the wealthy).

Kentwood is called the #1 school district in terms of property values, so yeah, they really are the rich kids, not just the middle class kids.



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Reply #63 on: October 03, 2008, 02:39:02 AM
John Henry: Black man with determination VS. White man with technology.

That said, I really enjoyed this story. It made me yern to go trail running again... I wonder if my knee would be ok with that? Anyhow, beautiful piece.

I ran track and CC in high school, among other sports, and sucked at them all equally. More than winning or losing I enjoyed the experience of it and learned great tangential lessons. I haven't competed in years, though I still enjoy supporting others who do, but I have always preferred 'hitting the wall and moving it back a few meters'. Our bodies are amazing machines capable of so much more than we give them credit for.

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


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Reply #64 on: October 03, 2008, 02:45:39 AM
John Henry: Black man with determination VS. White man with technology.
...

That's what I was thinking the whole time. I was expecting King to die when he passed the finish line.

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Reply #65 on: October 03, 2008, 02:52:54 AM

Kentwood is called the #1 school district in terms of property values, so yeah, they really are the rich kids, not just the middle class kids.


Depends on what state you're in.  If I don't live in Iowa's #1 property-value district, I'm pretty close, but we have few homes I'd describe as "CEO mansions," just a pretty solid wedge of middle to upper-middle class homes.  What I'd consider "mansions" are mostly restored older mansions in the city, or estates scattered on the periphery. I suspect the pattern is similar in much of the Midwest.  I understand things are different in the American Northeast.

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Reply #66 on: October 03, 2008, 11:09:03 AM
I know I'm a little late to this party, but I just finished listening to this episode while doing dishes and couldn't resist coming on here, registering myself for an account, and commenting.  That's how much I disliked this story.

The concept was great, actually, the characters were intriguing, the plot was not really that dull (although not something I'd normally get excited about--not the author's fault on that one, I just don't like sports stories), but the way the author used language in this story just drove me up the wall.  It's very difficult to follow such short choppy sentences in audio form, and the choppy flow of the story didn't seem to fit well with the fluidity of running.  Even those of us too chubby to really move fluidly while running probably would warrant less choppy language describing our acts of running.




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Reply #67 on: October 03, 2008, 03:59:33 PM
As a runner I like this story.  In high school (many years ago) I was that second place runner in the region, I beat the first place guy a couple of times, but by our senior year he out classed me.  I felt vindicated, how awful am I to even think that, a few years later when he had a heart attack from too much speed.  I think that was part of the story.  All the drugs and enhancements in the world can only get you so far.

One other interesting note is that I ran in high school and college and now as an adult.  High school was the only time I ever got hurt by other runners.  I got spiked, tripped, push into trees gabbed in the ribs, foot stepped on, had "rabbits" sent out in front to hurt me at the beginning of a race, and watched a guy dive, literally dive, across the finish line on asphalt to get in front of me.  In college, the worst I ever got was they sent four guys a head of us and after about 100 yards they turned around and squirted us with squirt guns.  It was all in fun.  Running now I am not as competitive, so maybe I just don't see it among the adults but I don't ever see anything, and certainly am not one the receiving end.  The worst I ever got as an adult, was when I beat our Col by the one second promised, and I had a "commander directed appointment" The following day.  (a drug test.)   He had a funny sense of humor.

Sorry for the off subject discussion.   In the end this was a good story, pretty realistic, and from a runners point of view, right on.  Great narration Steve.

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Reply #68 on: October 04, 2008, 03:19:12 AM
It's very difficult to follow such short choppy sentences in audio form, and the choppy flow of the story didn't seem to fit well with the fluidity of running.  Even those of us too chubby to really move fluidly while running probably would warrant less choppy language describing our acts of running.

Welcome Umamei (Umami?)!

I don't mean to criticize your view on the story, but it might be a matter of perspective that you didn't feel the writing style matching with the subject material. Running is a graceful sport under some lights, but under others it can feel every bit as mechanical as the writing in this story. Every motion is smooth and even in running, but your body shakes as your feet slam in to the ground and propel you forward. You focus and think in time with your breaths, like it or not.

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


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Reply #69 on: October 04, 2008, 03:40:05 AM
I listened to this story and then I immediately listened to it again.  I liked it that much.  Then I registered just to comment.  This is the first escape pod I have listened to again immediately after first hearing it.  I didn't even make it through three sentences of Steve's outro before I rewound.

I am not an athlete, but I was still pumping my fist for King!



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Reply #70 on: October 04, 2008, 03:11:40 PM
The ending was fabulous. The whole thing vaguly reminded me on an animatrix episods.. can't remembre the name right now- the one with the runner.  The fragmented sentene style made me NUTS! I was riding my bike listening to this, and so it did sort of inspire me to push harder. However I had to stop a few times, go back, and relisten to really understand what was going on.  WAY too fragmented. :P  The end almost made it worth it.

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Reply #71 on: October 04, 2008, 04:59:30 PM
It's very difficult to follow such short choppy sentences in audio form, and the choppy flow of the story didn't seem to fit well with the fluidity of running.  Even those of us too chubby to really move fluidly while running probably would warrant less choppy language describing our acts of running.

Welcome Umamei (Umami?)!

I don't mean to criticize your view on the story, but it might be a matter of perspective that you didn't feel the writing style matching with the subject material. Running is a graceful sport under some lights, but under others it can feel every bit as mechanical as the writing in this story. Every motion is smooth and even in running, but your body shakes as your feet slam in to the ground and propel you forward. You focus and think in time with your breaths, like it or not.
I agree that it is a matter of perspective, but I have to say that if "your body shakes as your feet slam in to the ground" then you're running all wrong, Thaurs.  A runner doesn't glide on ice, but "pounding the pavement" is a euphemism.  I took the choppiness to reflect more of King's sense of drive, his anger and competitive spirit.



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Reply #72 on: October 04, 2008, 08:32:51 PM
I have to say that while the structure and writing of this story drew me in, I was disappointed with the theme. The "winner of a cross country race" is not the one who tries hardest, risks the most, or has the most obstacles to overcome. The "winner" is the one who comes across the finish line first.

We can add all of the extra baggage onto what it means to "win" and get all figurative and abstract and metaphor-ladden, but I would have really liked to see how the author dealt with King had he lost the race, a-la-Mighty Casey Strikes Out.



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Reply #73 on: October 06, 2008, 12:55:30 AM
I agree that it is a matter of perspective, but I have to say that if "your body shakes as your feet slam in to the ground" then you're running all wrong, Thaurs.  A runner doesn't glide on ice, but "pounding the pavement" is a euphemism.  I took the choppiness to reflect more of King's sense of drive, his anger and competitive spirit.
I agree that the motion feels smooth, but if you think that even the best runners don't 'slam' in to the pavement when they run, try strapping video camera to your shoulder next time you go out. Landing flat footed kills your shins and knees and saps your energy, but it's the core muscles, coordination, and whatever it is that keeps your vision from shaking like a video camera that lets you feel like your motion is a lot more smooth than it is.
No matter how good a shoe, or stride, or how well one rolls from heel to toe, runners are shaking themselves to pieces.

How do you fight a bully that can un-make history?


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Reply #74 on: October 06, 2008, 02:23:47 AM
Someone commented that it bothered them that the protagonist and antagonists were pretty much the same: both ruthless, arrogant bastards. That bothered me too at first, but as I thought about it more, I realized that was the point.

This is King's sport, King's turf, King's subjects and King's races to win. Here come these lazy cheating lilly-white rich kids usurping the throne with money, not talent. King had the superior natural genetics and was on top of his sport; the usurpers got their suboptimal natural genes artificially augmented and tried to beat the king at his own game.

I was unnerved by King's underhanded tactics to get ahead in the race because you expect the underdog to have the moral high ground, that's how it works in fiction, because nobody sympathizes with an underdog who cheats to get ahead. King does not have the moral high ground, but he's also not an underdog. He's an ousted monarch attempting to retake the throne.

I wasn't a fan of the format. It was hard to follow. I don't know if that's just because I'm trained to follow more standard formats or if it's actually tougher to ascertain what's going on when all we have are someone else's thoughts. In any case, I missed some things I would ordinarily not miss, like the point of the vacations in China (thanks forum for pointing that out to me).

I also can't sympathize with the competitive spirit. I like to play friendly matches of basketball, as long as you don't take it too seriously or ask me to keep score; I always forget because I don't care. I can't push myself to train up to a competitive level because it's just not worth it to me. In that vein, I absolutely cannot understand competitive runners. With games like basketball there's a goal involved that justifies the pain of running; when running is the sport, there is only pain. If you get off on that, who am I to tell you what to enjoy? But I did not enjoy that part of the story at all, because I just don't get it on any level.