Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Kiss My Half


Saw this the other day while stopped at a traffic light. I don't know if you can make it out, but there's a pink sticker right above the rear windshield washer blade. It says, "13.1"

In running parlance, thats the distance for a Half-Marathon. 13.1 miles is a long way to run. I know, because I've run the Santa Monica Half-Marathon on a few occasions. It's a good 2 & 1/2 half hours of non-stop chugging, grinding and re-adjusting of sneakers so as not to incur blisters. It's a lot of pain. A little less than half the pain it would take to run a Full Marathon.

And there-in lies the rub.

It's a half accomplishment and doesn't merit a trophy, a t-shirt or even a window sticker for your car. Why would you want to tell people you did half of something? Derek Jeter doesn't hit the showers after 4 &1/2 innings. Tom Brady doesn't call the shots for 30 minutes and then take the mike at the news conference, "I feel good, I went out there and gave it 55%."

There's no pride in doing something half-assed.

A couple of weeks ago, before my wife ran the Nike Women's Marathon for Leukemia in SF, she wavered and confessed, "Maybe I'll only do the half." That's when I dragged out some old Tony Robbins Motivational Tapes and convinced her that if she were only going to do half she might as well not do any.

I don't like half.
Never have.
Never will.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It would be as if I started this rant about doing something halfway and

4 comments:

Jeff said...

I see what you did there.

Jeff said...

I like that you have Tony Robbins tapes. i wrote a car campaign using him. Awsome if I do say so myself. The CD who shall go nameless wouldn't even let us present the campaign to her because she didn't like Tony Robbins. Then the agency lost the business. Then she got let go. I looked at it as the glass being half full.

Rich Siegel said...

Here's a dirty little secret: I don't actually have Tony Robbins motivational tapes. I took some literary literary license. I do have Tony Horton DVDs, of P90X fame, if that's any consolation.

Jeff said...

Fine. I'll write a Tony Horton campaign.