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In the ranking of stickers on the back of cars that make you think someone is the worst, it usually starts with Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes) pissing on something and ends with a “26.2” sticker signaling that someone ran a marathon. Mixed in are those stickers symbolizing how many beings are riding in the minivan going 55 in a 65-mile-per-hour zone, and the “COEXIST” stickers written with peace signs and yin-yangs.
Even less impressive than a 26.2 sticker is the dreaded 13.1 sticker which says, “I ran the bare minimum to make you think I’m still athletic and deserve your praise.” Running 13.1 miles, while not the easiest thing in the world, still isn’t the most impressive athletic feat either. For a seasoned runner, 13.1 miles is like zoning out on a treadmill for an extra episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians or something. Running a half marathon is essentially saying, “I want to be the insufferable type of person who gets to talk about running, but I also refuse to give up drinking hard all weekend in order to actually train for a full marathon.”
Adding to that insufferability, though? Getting married smack dab in the middle of a half-marathon. Something Krissa Cetner and Alex Salazar did on Mile 6 of the Brooklyn half-marathon on May 20th. It’s like someone said, “Alright, how can we make this the most punchable wedding ever? Oh, there’s a half-marathon in Brooklyn next week? Perfect, let’s just do that.”
But it didn’t just stop there.
Krissa told The New York Times (your one-stop shop for terrible marriage announcements, for any greenhorns out there looking for hate-reads), “I did my first race when I was in my mom’s belly. My parents were runners, and they would take me to races.” This is quite possibly the grossest way to describe your first race – a race you didn’t even run in. Hell, it’s a race you weren’t even alive for. I’m not a doctor, but I feel like putting your pregnant body through the arduous process of running a marathon would affect your baby later on in life. Like, oh, I don’t know… like causing their brain to make them think it’s a sane idea to have a wedding during a half-fucking-marathon? But I digress.
The wedding occurred at 7:30 a.m. in Prospect Park. I had always thought 7:30 p.m. weddings were miserable because you had to sit around all day with your thumb up your ass, but the idea of waking up at the crack of dawn to watch two people drenched in sweat exchange vows while wearing workout clothes somehow just took the cake. Fifty people showed up to watch the groom, who wore a silk-screened fake tuxedo spandex shirt, take thee mom-runner to be his lawfully wedded wife. Oh, and they had “bride and groom running bibs” in case there was any confusion as to who the assholes holding up the damn race were.
Using the most obvious metaphor of all-time, the wedding’s officiant declared, “Marriage is a marathon, not a sprint.” Ground-breaking stuff.
They also finished the race in 2 hours and 45 minutes despite normally finishing races in about two hours. “But we didn’t care,” she joked. “We accomplished a lot in those 2 hours and 45 minutes.” Ha! Like getting married!
In the only part of this entire debacle that made me smirk, The Times also revealed that the bride dropped her iPhone in the beginning of the race, thus shattering the screen. They tried passing it off as “good luck” in the same vein as the Jewish tradition of stomping on a glass, but I’d like to think it was just God’s way of sticking it to them for not doing things the old-fashioned way.
The couple drove off from their ceremony in a green 2010 Chrysler Town & Country with soup cans tied to the back and a 13.1 sticker on the bumper next to “Just Married!” written in sweat. Okay, not really, but nine months from now, don’t be surprised if you see a 2010 Chrysler Town & Country with a 13.1 sticker and a new baby sticker in the family line-up. .
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Will
Will (Twitter / Instagram) is the host of The Sunday Scaries Podcast.
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I hate people.
Hope they got stress fractures.
I would stop talking to my friends if they did this
At least the NYT announcement doesn’t read like the bride and groom’s resumes this time.
As a former college cross country runner… I could not agree more with you.
Half marathons are a joke, an avid runner knocks out 13 miles before brunch on a casual Sunday.
Getting married during one? Even more of a joke.
Also it’s sad that running is this big in their life and they typically take 2 hours. Dude you’re getting smoked by high school kids on the reg at that pace.
I’ve run quite a few marathons, half marathons and Ironmans but you will never convince me that running 13 miles is in any way an easy thing to do. We can all still agree that getting hitched during one is dumb.
All kinds of respect on that Ironman
The only cardio you should get on your wedding day is sex
If didn’t work up a sweat on the dance floor, did you even get married?
Did you mean to sound more insufferable than them? Because you just managed to sound more insufferable than them.
Who’d you run for?
The only sticker worse than the COEXIST sticker is the CONTRADICT sticker with the same religious symbols.
Didn’t have a damn clue what you were talking about and after a quick google search I wish I could go back to that time. I do take solace however in the fact that all bumper stickers do help me identify the people whom I have no interest in ever interacting with.
Telling people about your what?
They can be even more efficient and use the money they would have spent on wedding rings to make down payments on the knee replacements they will probably need by ages 50 and 52 respectively
Contrary to popular belief running isn’t bad for your knees. The more you know
No, but the way most people run is bad for their knees. Damn elevated-heel shoes and muscular imbalances.
First off major respect to you for running XC at the college level, I can only imagine what your weekly mileage/racing at the 8K and 10K distance was like. I wholeheartedly agree the act of running itself isn’t bad, the problem I’ve noticed is the majority of people do the majority of their running on asphalt or concrete which is bad for knees in the long term and like Kimber said most of these people are compounding the issue by not running with proper form.
Yea I can get on board with that. And biting off more than they can chew by not taking the time to do everything slowly and properly. Lord knows I’ll still do that..
Put me down for the full Pistorius treatment… minus the rage-killing.