Go Go Amy MO!

This is Buffalo News reporter Amy Moritz after finishing her first marathon this past Sunday!

I might be biased but I happen to believe I have the greatest father on the face of this earth. The older I get the more I hold close to me the lessons he has taught me. Form being 20 minutes early to everything.... to understanding that being happy is life's biggest priority...... he taught me to surround myself with people who contribute and won't try to take away from who I am.

I am pretty lucky that I don't get many harassing blog comments. Many of my friends have not been so lucky. Many of them have to deal with long and psychopathic emails and comments trying to tear them from limb to limb about their lives, their blogs.... whatever.

For me the answer is very simple...... I just don't take these things personally. Think of it this way...... if someone visits my blog each and every day, and what I write about gets them into such a huffy that they feel they have to spend actual time blasting me....... that's not a problem with me..... that's a problem with them. If I see within the first line of a comment that it's a harassment comment.... I just hit delete and move on. I have had one unfortunate experience with a psycho blog stalker, whom I was able to successfully prosecute for Internet harassment. It's not such a difficult case to win by the way.

I coach someone who I think is really really spectacular. Her name is Amy Moritz and she's a journalist for the Buffalo News. She ran her first marathon this past Sunday in 5:02. She learned to swim in November of 2007 and has competed in several triathlons..

As part of her writing she writes a blog a few times a week. You can find that blog here. On this blog Amy receives many positive comments. She unfortunately receives horrible negative ones, and sometimes even I have to wonder how she handles this.

For example yesterday, a man who calls himself Matthew Collins wrote this email to her......

From: Matthew Collins [mailto:mrc072174@yahoo.com]

Sent: Tue 5/26/2009 11:12 AM

To: Moritz, AmySubject: Are you done yet?

Okay. Is your little experiment over yet? To any observer, astute or otherwise (head in the sand included) you are not an athlete.

How many Amy Moritz's are there writing blogs about their mediocre training runs? Now, how many get paid for it?

11:32 mile pace? This is as pedestrian as your 49 minutes for a 750 meter swim. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. And as soon as you finished your first season as a "competitive athlete" you express pie-in-the-sky dreams of a half-Ironman and maybe an Ironman. No doubt you'd get the tattoo on your calf like all the others. Hey look at my corporate symbol on my body. Yeah, it's owned by the world triathlon corporation. I'm getting the Pepsi logo next week.

You insult athletes by completely side-stepping the learning curve. Not to mention, everybody with a mid life crisis these days is turning to multi-sport to right their ship. Based on your results you have no functional strength. I'm curious what your dry-land consists of.

Like most wanna-bes, you'll state with great conviction that you work your "core" a few times per week. Please for the sake of your readership.

Stop blogging about your vain and meaningless pursuits. Isn't there a Girl Scout troop or soup kitchen that needs volunteers?

It makes me wonder a lot about the people who do this kind of thing. Amy unfortunately gets a lot of these kinds of emails..... and while I don't intend to turn this into a gender thing...... the ones who harass her are always males. Which makes me hop that these people are not fathers or even worse..... husbands.

My favorite comment of the day for her was this one from Greg:

Amy, some people are idiots. Simple as that. I'm inspired by your tales... and it's phenomenal that you ran a marathon. Anyone who thinks less of you can go... you know.

Greg's got it right. Some people are just idiots.

What's beautiful about Amy is that just over a year ago she did not know how to swim. Her running consisted of 5 minutes running, 5 minutes walking. A few years ago Amy was 40 pounds heavier and a party girl. She's slowly transformed herself into a healthy young woman who is finding herself on this path of health.

She's made friends in the athletic world who share her passion and her dreams. She's been able to surround herself with those people and shed the layer of self destruction that we all find ourselves in at some point in our lives.

I think each of us has encountered a Matthew Collins at some point in our lives. Someone who will take great strides to tear us down. We can choose to keep ourselves in that circle of needing to prove ourselves, or we can just accept that some people are idiots, and move on.

Personally I am really inspired by Amy. Being an athlete is not defined by a number or a placing or a status. Being an athlete is defined by you. The person who wins the marathon and the person who finishes last are athletes, and so is every single person in the middle.

To steal a quote from her race report, from which she paraphrased from somewhere else:

“If you want to learn about running, run a mile. If you want to learn about life, run a marathon.”

What would my father say about this email? He'd likely say the same thing as Greg did. Some people are idiots.