explain to me what’s going on here. not with them, with you all. and i’m not criticizing. i just notice that with ashlea horner (as an example) there was pretty keen interest. more than 3000 posts.
what animates you about this? positively or negatively? is it the:
promotion? or self promotion? you admire it or are offended by it?
the audacity of the effort? or the outlandishness of the effort?
the laudable fundraising goal? or your pretext of it?
if this is a “what doesn’t belong as part of this group” riddle, does ashley horner somehow belong with iron cowboy, lance armstrong, julie miller, or what? is there a receptor in you she strikes that gets struck by others (for better or worse) even if those others are thematically different?
Speaking only for myself, I think my interest and indignation is a bit different in each situation:
For the Iron Cowboy, for me it is all about claiming a world record of 50 ironmans in 50 days in 50 states, since he clearly did not do it. What he did do was EXTREMELY impressive from both an athletic and mental fortitude standpoint. But if you are going to claim a world record, you should be honest about it. I think I was interested in the extreme audacity of the goal. Then indignant about his attempt to essentially redefine what an ironman is to suit his personal desires. And you still see full page ads in USA Triathlon Magazine touting his 50-50-50. I think that’s pretty absurd.
With Ashley Horner, it was a bit different. You’ve got someone who not has no experience, training or results to show that she could even accomplish a single fast ironman, much less 50 in 50 days - but you have a lot of evidence that she has lied about previous endurance achievements and received no push-back on it. People just seemed to accept that it happened. So my feeling was that someone with that background should not be able to waltz into triathlon, pretend to do a monumental feat in the sport with no evidence that it actually happened and take a media victory tour. I was very pleasantly surprised that she ended up posting the data. Some claim attention and push back from the tri community caused her to post data from this attempt - I have no idea if that is true or not, but I am glad that she did.
Edit: also, IC’s extreme dishonesty (and possibly worse) about the charity donations really pissed me off.
well said above, but I think she epitomizes “2018”…where social media runs crazy. A world in which the Kardashians have made billions and our President (I’m not trying to make this political) tweets about important policy decisions.
So, AH puts her stake in the ground and everyone has a reaction to it, and then everyone has a reaction to the reaction, and well, its a chain reaction…
explain to me what’s going on here. not with them, with you all. and i’m not criticizing. i just notice that with ashlea horner (as an example) there was pretty keen interest. more than 3000 posts.
what animates you about this? positively or negatively? is it the:
promotion? or self promotion? you admire it or are offended by it?
the audacity of the effort? or the outlandishness of the effort?
the laudable fundraising goal? or your pretext of it?
if this is a “what doesn’t belong as part of this group” riddle, does ashley horner somehow belong with iron cowboy, lance armstrong, julie miller, or what? is there a receptor in you she strikes that gets struck by others (for better or worse) even if those others are thematically different?
The mysogynistic and sexist tones of some of the members…been called a white knight, guess I’ll own it, because I’m used to the triathlon community always being open to new people.
I get the whole “respect my sport” bullshit. But at the end of the day, triathlon like god does the humbling. Other triathletes don’t do any humbling because this is an individual hammering on your own body.
well said above, but I think she epitomizes “2018”…where social media runs crazy. A world in which the Kardashians have made billions and our President (I’m not trying to make this political) tweets about important policy decisions.
So, AH puts her stake in the ground and everyone has a reaction to it, and then everyone has a reaction to the reaction, and well, its a chain reaction…
i don’t want to put words on your mouth, but what you’re saying is that AH is the endurance sport version of the kardashian/trump world, where fame and infamy are now almost the same, everyone chooses his own reality, there is no penalty to pay for bad execution, and fame is a sort of fireproof currency? that as long as i somehow stay out of jail that i’m pretty much good to go, as long as i don’t sexually harass an employee?
and you all have a problem with that? with someone getting away with it, using endurance sport as a platform?
In a word her hubris - “a personality quality of extreme or foolish pride or dangerous overconfidence, often in combination with (or synonymous with) arrogance**. **In classical Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero. Typically, overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status, and the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of his or her mortality.”
explain to me what’s going on here. not with them, with you all. and i’m not criticizing. i just notice that with ashlea horner (as an example) there was pretty keen interest. more than 3000 posts.
what animates you about this? positively or negatively? is it the:
promotion? or self promotion? you admire it or are offended by it?
the audacity of the effort? or the outlandishness of the effort?
the laudable fundraising goal? or your pretext of it?
if this is a “what doesn’t belong as part of this group” riddle, does ashley horner somehow belong with iron cowboy, lance armstrong, julie miller, or what? is there a receptor in you she strikes that gets struck by others (for better or worse) even if those others are thematically different?
The mysogynistic and sexist tones of some of the members…been called a white knight, guess I’ll own it, because I’m used to the triathlon community always being open to new people.
I get the whole “respect my sport” bullshit. But at the end of the day, triathlon like god does the humbling. Other triathletes don’t do any humbling because this is an individual hammering on your own body.
can you explain to me the misogyny? in light of the iron cowboy thread, which seemed to me pretty similar.
The outlandishness of the goal relative to her background/training/relevant experience, plus the brash, unwarranted confidence and dismissive attitude towards those who cautioned her that she was severely underestimating the difficulty of the task, all compounded by the fact that she got major media to believe this was a credible effort and give her exposure.
This was a textbook case of “hubris,” in the Ancient Greek sense.
From Merrian-Webster’s online entry for the word “hubris”: In classical Greek tragedy, hubris was often a fatal shortcoming that brought about the fall of the tragic hero. Typically, overconfidence led the hero to attempt to overstep the boundaries of human limitations and assume a godlike status, and the gods inevitably humbled the offender with a sharp reminder of his or her mortality.
Many were happy to see the gods put her in her place, and quickly. When she failed to acknowledge that she had, indeed, been shown to be mortal, the indignation re-erupted.
While I was typing, JRTX posted more or less the same thing.
so, net net, is she happy that the whole thing happened? did she come out ahead? or if she could roll back the clock, would she prefer she never did it? not what you would think if you were her, but what she probably thinks. is her brand better off or worse off?
My personal take is for people like AH, any attention is good attention. I had never heard of her a couple weeks ago. Now I have. I don’t think very highly of her but I now know who she is so her goal was accomplished
The train wreck that was bound to happen. It was hard to look away from this one. Kinda like when someone is in a breakaway and you know they’re gonna blow up you’re just wondering when. Same idea but 10000x the blowup was expected.
I never really had a problem with IC’s thing, though I wasn’t really up on what was happening with his charity.
For me, the AH thing was more about the attitude going in – it just smacked of a “look at me” attempt, along with the hubris that seems deep in the Crossfit community that you’re training to “be able to do anything”. Yes, she got smacked around a lot, and quite frankly accomplished something that few would even want to attempt, but the attitudes remain, and the irresponsibility of how it was carried out needs to be owned.
so, net net, is she happy that the whole thing happened? did she come out ahead? or if she could roll back the clock, would she prefer she never did it? not what you would think if you were her, but what she probably thinks. is her brand better off or worse off?
This is simple. She is far better off for having tried.
More followersMore brand awarenessShe created a divided…you are with her or against her = more loyalty and a willingness to defend her against all attacks. (This is literally the Trump strategy say something so crazy that people cant defend it…then watch them defend it to the death) EDIT: I want to note that she started this quest because Hannah Eden told her she couldn’t come to Iceland with her. This lead her to want to do something that would outclass Hannah.
I am probably too quick to see sexism… I did see it in the AH thread but it wasn’t prevent. There are always going to be those people…
I cannot believe that IC and AH are being lumped together. IC set out to do an incredible athletic feat and needed some publicity ($$$$) to get it done. AH wanted publicity so she invented an athletic feat that had no chance of success.
Fame and infamy are basically the same thing… that is a great observation.
so, net net, is she happy that the whole thing happened? did she come out ahead? or if she could roll back the clock, would she prefer she never did it? not what you would think if you were her, but what she probably thinks. is her brand better off or worse off?
Only she can answer whether she is happy but no, she did not come out ahead. She failed in her athletic goal; she failed in her fundraising goal; and she tarnished her brand. Unlike her other claimed, but undocumented, feats, she was unable to produce when the spotlight was on her. Her hubris may bring her back to triathlon but if she was smart, she would look elsewhere to increase her “followers”.