So, last week, Paul Ryan told Hugh Hewitt this:
HH: Are you still running?
PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons anymore. I just run ten miles or yes.
HH: But you did run marathons at some point?
PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it anymore, because my back is just not that great.
HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your personal best?
PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something.
HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…
PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.
Hewitt observed, “I was also surprised to hear Ryan has run a sub-3 hour marathon. Add another interest group to the list of groups like Catholics, hunters and Miami of Ohio grads who are going to connect easily with this candidate.”
This apparently caught the eye of Runner’s World – a sub-3 marathon is pretty fast. Call it 26.2 miles in 2:55 – that would be like a 6:40/M pace the entire way. So, they went to look it up and couldn’t find the race. They pressed a little, and, turns out, he never ran “marathons” plural – he ran one marathon in 1990 with a time of 4:01:25.
I wouldn’t make too much out of this. It’s just weird to misremember running multiple marathons at advanced speeds when, really, you ran one in a workmanlike time. Politically, though, you never know what is going to catch on. Remember the “Al Gore lies” narrative? Combine this with the politically calculated false claims Ryan made in his convention speech, and you have to think he’s on thin ice; not too far from people being able to tag him with unfair assertions that he claims to have invented the Internet and whatnot.
I want someone to fact check whether the kids he pointed to at the RNC were really his. They looked like the could have been rented from Central Casting. But the real point is that he’s shown that we should mistrust any assertion he makes until it’s verified by independent fact checkers. Because so far, while a lot of words come out of his mouth, not too many of them are true.
Well, in fairness the “Al Gore lies” line caught on because Al Gore lies. One only has to research the “facts” cited in Inconvenient Truth to come to that conclusion.
So, then, you’re saying Paul Ryan is screwed?
Hopefully he won’t end up like Gore.
One of the alleged lies about the Jaynesville plant, isn’t actually a lie. If you carefully listen to the audio he never said the plant closed on Obama’s watch. One might jump to that conclusion, but he never said that.
I’ll take your word for it that Ryan may not have said in so many words that the plant closed on Obama’s watch. And so “lie” in the sense of “knowingly and deliberately false” might not apply. But come on………the statement would have not had the effect it was intended to have had it contained information on when the plant actually closed. So at least “misleading” applies here.
“One might” — was that the conclusion he intended the listener to reach? You’re bending over backward to excuse this guy.
he obviously wanted the audience to come to that conclusion: no jumping required. otherwise, what was the point of even bringing it up?
also, this wasn’t the first time ryan lied about jaynesville:
Ryan stirred memories of the factory on Aug. 16, 2012, attacking President Barack Obama during a campaign speech in Ohio.
“I remember President Obama visiting it when he was first running, saying he’ll keep that plant open. One more broken promise,” Ryan said.
Most credible sources find very few inaccuracies and general aggreements on the major scientific claims.
That’s because they’re in on it, man! Come on, Sheeple!
“…Add another interest group to the list of groups like Catholics, hunters and Miami of Ohio grads who are going to connect easily with this candidate.”
Oh, wait a minute! I’m Catholic and none of the Catholics I fraternize with feel connected to him at all. And he was taken to task by the faculties of both Georgetown and Marquette Universities for falsely claiming that his Catholic faith is the foundation of his views of and plans for the economy. Of course, he then promptly discarded (or covered up) his Ayn Rand infatuation and transferred his affections to Thomas Aquinas. No shame!
So, yes, be very skeptical.
But then again who will fact-check the fact-checkers, and who will check them? Contrary to what those pointy-headed liberals are saying, I AM entitled to my own facts. I built them.
And the fact-checkers will not run the Romney-Ryan campaign anyway.
Ya know, that’s interesting. Because you have something else in common, allegedly. While in Colorado, he claimed to have summited approximately 40 of the 14,000 ft peaks there. Anymore, most climbers of those peaks congregate on 14ers.com, and the community got pretty excited that there is a fellow climber of those specific peaks in the race. It was the topic of many conversations. No one had seen him on these peaks– which doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Tens of thousands of people come out here to climb. But I bet the Colorado Mountain Club could check old summit registers– especially if Ryan cared to name the peaks.
I was sceptical. Maybe he took a prolonged vacation of several weeks or spent a summer here. But otherwise, 40 is a pretty big number, and takes a prolonged commitment (if you’re coming from the midwest, that’s generally many trips over several years). I’ve arrived from Indiana, and tomorrow at around 2 am I’ll be getting up and trying to summit my 40th Colorado 14er. Doug can testify that these things can take 6, 12, 18 hours each. So if you casually state on the campaign trail that you’ve been up 40 of them, you’re saying that you’ve been on the trail 35-40 days total, plus the time it takes to acclimate, drive six or seven hours from Denver airport, etc. So you’ve spent a LOT of time here.
Hearing that he pretty significantly inflated his running resume, my suspicion of his mountaineering biography is now that much higher.
You’re about to hit 40, Tom? Nice. I’m proud to have hit two of them with you!
Is it possible that he was referring to marathon-length runs on his own? When you don’t need split-second timing, self-timing these things is accurate enough.
I don’t run in organized races because I find them inconvenient and running in crowds frustrating, but I regularly do half-marathons on my own, and am nearly up to marathon distance. So it seems plausible.
Unlikely. And, in any event, the jump from 4 hours to sub-3 is a quantum leap. The most charitable conclusion I could reach on this, if it weren’t for the whoppers he told in his convention speech, is that he simply doesn’t and hasn’t run enough to know what normal times look like. (But, training for the marathon he did run is no small thing; so that more charitable explanation is a little tenuous itself.)
It’s just weird. “I ran a 4 hour marathon once” is solid. I don’t know what’s going in a mind that feels the need to exaggerate that.
http://start.toshiba.com/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CDA116NPG0%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=915
Ryan corrects his “mistatement.” Fact-checkers on, Ryan zero.
No mention of the number of marathons he ran.
Hit #40 this morning at 7:30 (4 o’clock start). I think Mt. Yale is the one for you and Amy, Doug. No significant exposure. Really pretty. One guy who passed me ran it in 1:50. People are in insane shape out here.
All these comments about moutain climbing and running marathons make me feel like a slug. :)
The current Paul Ryan mountain number is 38 climbs of 28 individual peaks. That’s seems more reasonable somehow. Anyway, that’s the number for now.
Good for him. Physical fitness is laudable and should be encouraged. Is mountain climbing an expensive sport?
Yes and no. Most of the 14ers can be climbed by anyone with a pair of boots. But factoring in airfare to get there, rental car, gear to camp vs. hotel, and a week off work if you don’t have paid vacation, and you’re talking about some money.
Where does an “11er” fit in to the climbing scheme? Specifically, Sandia Peak in Albuquerque?