I clicked with trepidation as it seems all participants in endurance sports have become parrots lately. They blurt from their caged perches "Polly wants an epic" and "HTFU" and little else. Luckily my sister did engage in something epic and I had to take my eye-roll back, but there should be a panel of hardened, wizened and skeptical endurance athletes that will rule on your event's level of epicness; if any.
Sitting here from atop my throne of vocabularied accusations I remember my overuse of the word. I once wanted to engage in something called Kevvy's Epic Training Week in which I was to engage in all sorts of swimming, biking and running; all of the epic variety. All were welcome. It was epic in it's failure and participation. I haven't uttered the word seriously since.
The first time I noticed the word was in 1986 during a 300ZX car commercial. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHvm-dMUaFo "Germany...yeah. Now that would be epic." That is definitely the coolest use of the word ever.
A professor in college once went on and on about Homer's Iliad and Odyssey being among the first written epics. If you've ever attempted to read them you'll understand the word is being used properly in a double context as it serves as a noun and adjective.
Defining what is and isn't epic will be difficult and that is why I have appointed the panel. Don't think a 5k is capable of being epic? Not usually but if you ran it during a double-mega-hurricane while robot pit bulls chased you while you ran sub-seventeen minutes on a broken femur then you just might be allowed to say the next day at the water cooler that your Save The Homeless Dandelions 5k race was indeed epic but let's not get carried away. Doing an Olympic-distance tri in a slight drizzle isn't...well you know what it isn't.
Today I went on a mundane trail run in Mendon Ponds Park. I didn't need to HTFU and nothing about it was epic. I fought through the lack of epicness and still had fun.
"Why are we stopping? Are you tired already old man?"
Ordinary trail signs.
Your average hill.
Decent trail conditions.
"That's all you got? An hour? Kevin, your suckiness is epic!"
1 comment:
Epic dog.
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