We’re used to politicians lying to us, but why would one lie about something totally unrelated to the election or to their jobs? Paul Ryan actually claimed to have run a marathon in less than three hours, something completely irrelevant and nearly impossible for a casual, non-professional runner. When a magazine devoted to running called him out for the unlikely nature of that claim, he backed off and said it was closer to 4 hours. Just a baffling claim that serves no purpose other than to make him look like a liar.
Sep 05 2012
Ryan’s Baffling Marathon Lie
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Randomfactor
September 5, 2012 at 11:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There’s a saying among the “adult children of alcoholic families” community that one of the defining characteristics of such is how ACoA’s “lie when the truth would do as well.”
A four-hour marathon…hell, FINISHING a marathon at all…is a tremendous achievement. To lie about it, when it’s so easily checked? Why?
Quite apart from his political lies, I think there’s something dysfunctional about Mr. Lyin’ Ryan. He hath that lean and hungry look.
holytape
September 5, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There should be a competition between him and Pat Robertson. He can run a three hour marathon, and Pat can leg press a ton.
Mr Ed
September 5, 2012 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Almost all races publish there results online. My wife is a race timer and at the end of each race the results complete with names and ages are upload to a handful of sites. It is very easy to plug in a name and get all the results for that runner.
Seems like Ryan is a bit of a pathological liar. Even when it is in his interest to tell the truth he can’t resist amping it up a notch.
hexidecima
September 5, 2012 at 11:36 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It seems that Ryan is addicted to lying. When you have so many people who swallow your lies wholesale and love you for telling them, I’m sure it’s hard not to want to keep on doing it.
dingojack
September 5, 2012 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
‘Can’t even lie straight in bed‘: the unofficial motto of the PoG since Ray-gun was elected Prez.
Dingo
eric
September 5, 2012 at 11:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
IANA psychologist, but inferiority complex maybe? When people inflate their own accomplishments for no discernable gain, it may be because they don’t feel that their actual accomplishment was good enough.
As randomfactor said, simply finishing a marathon is something to be proud of. If lie about your time, it may be because of the way you feel about it, not because of what others feel about it.
slc1
September 5, 2012 at 12:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
What must be galling to Ryan the rat is that Sarah Palin has run a faster marathon then he has.
d cwilson
September 5, 2012 at 12:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think Ryan and Romney made a bet to see who could tell the most lies in the campaign. Romney had a pretty big head start, so Ryan has a lot of catching up to do.
busterggi
September 5, 2012 at 12:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m surprised he backed off his first claim.
Its not as though he’s allowed reality to affect any of his other claims.
marcus
September 5, 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Just a baffling claim that serves no purpose other than to make him look like a liar.” Which is entirely appropriate since… he’s a fucking liar!
nimsudo
September 5, 2012 at 1:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, he’s a misogynist, so maybe he did it to claim a lower time than a 40y/o mother of four? His actual time is about an hour longer than Sarah Palin’s. And don’t tell me he isn’t petty enough for that to be a reason.
StevoR
September 5, 2012 at 1:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ryan = Compulsive liar. Reckon. He wanted to brag bout doing summin he didn’t. Went overboard.. Got caught. Idiot politician.
Hope this brings extra scrutiny and the more and teh closer they look at what Ryan says and has said I’m guessing the more lies they’ll catch.
Ryan may not quite be another Sarah Palin but I reckon he’s another veep that’ll look a very bad choice in history’s eyes.
StevoR
September 5, 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
PS. Not that Mittens had much good to choose from.
(Condi Rice would’ve perhaps been best of bad lot?)
Taz
September 5, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I heard he ran it just because it was on his way.
Paul Ryan, the most interesting candidate in the world.
StevoR
September 5, 2012 at 1:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
PPS. MY guess is Obama will win 2012 easily.
Condoleeza Rice may not have accepted anyhow hanging off for 2016 when she could well run as a serious Republican POTUS contender in hopefully saner and different times.
She would probably have been their best option this time too but of those who ran, Huntsman least worst then Mitt the Shit so, well, coulda been worse.
dean
September 5, 2012 at 1:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If he was really at this marathon where are all the other people with whom he ran, huh? How come we don’t see them coming forward. I smell fakery. :)
Chiroptera
September 5, 2012 at 2:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
…but why would one lie about something totally unrelated to the election or to their jobs?
Why is this even a question? These people just lie impulsively and relfexively. He probably gave no thought whatsoever about whether what he was saying was true or not.
d cwilson
September 5, 2012 at 2:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe by then she’ll have learned something about foreign policy.
caseloweraz
September 5, 2012 at 3:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Taz wrote: “Paul Ryan, the most interesting candidate in the world.”
But does his blood smell like cologne?
maddog1129
September 5, 2012 at 4:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Meh. I think this one could be just a mistake, not necessarily a lie.
Mr Ed
September 5, 2012 at 4:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maddog1129 Meh. I think this one could be just a mistake, not necessarily a lie.
Not a chance, there is a huge difference between three (6:50 miles) and four hours (9:09 miles). It is the difference of being way ahead of the pack or toward the back of it. If you ran just one marathon to take it off your bucket list you would know how you did and if you ran them regularly you know your best time.
maddog1129
September 5, 2012 at 4:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@ Mr. Ed,
Yes, I know that perhaps a lot of people would know their times, but I know for myself that I’m not one of them. Never done a marathon, but I’ve done a few other races, and remembered my times for a while, but I no longer do. Plus there was a kid on the XC team that my trainer coaches, who was saying that he ran 4 miles in 15 min. That’s got to be a mistake, either as to the distance or as to the time; I don’t think the kid’s a liar. So I’m more willing to think that this one could be a mistake. Not a big deal though, and it’s not as though there aren’t plenty of more substantive and verifiable lies to hang on Ryan.
Area Man
September 5, 2012 at 4:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Meh. I think this one could be just a mistake, not necessarily a lie.”
My take exactly. It’s amusing, but anyone trying to make a real issue out of it is way off-base. The fact that it’s so easily disproven should make it obvious that he wasn’t trying to fool anyone.
wholething
September 5, 2012 at 5:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maybe Ryan is another Kim Jong Il. Ask him about his last round of golf and he’ll say he did it in 18 strokes.
democommie
September 5, 2012 at 7:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Area Man@13:
While the lie itself is nothing, what it says about Ryan’s character IS something. If he lies about something as trivial as his time for a marathon–which, it has been pointed out, is easy to check–it is not at all hard to imagine him lying about anything that is harder to check and important to lie about.
Also, most of the sheeple have no fucking idea how economics or foreign policy works, but they’ve all ran or watched people run a race.
aluchko
September 5, 2012 at 10:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I have to agree with the others that this is just a mistake. The guy is not a runner so the numbers don’t carry the same meaning for him, all he cared about was finishing. I have no trouble believing that in the space of 20 years a 3 got turned into a 4.
Btw 3 hours is not “something completely irrelevant and nearly impossible for a casual, non-professional runner”. For some perspective I’ve broken 3:10, and while there’s a good chance I’m the fastest person in any given room, I’m never shocked if there turns out to be someone faster, and I’m still only in the top 5-15% of most community races. To break 3 you need to be pretty thin, and get in a solid amount of volume, but you don’t need to be elite (I’d expect a University level runner to make 2:30-2:40 with a bit of training).
scienceavenger
September 5, 2012 at 11:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Areaman said: The fact that it’s so easily disproven should make it obvious that he wasn’t trying to fool anyone.
Bull Shit, a thousand times. Don’t ever make that mistake. It’s what pathological liars depend on to get support for their lying. I know it makes absolutely no sense to you, a rational person, but that’s how some irrational people behave. I’m sure others who have had similar experiences to mine can chime in here.
And while Ed overstates the matter a bit with the “professional runner” comment (my dad ran 2:40 and was merely a dedicated amatuer), he’s in the right ballpark. Running a marathon is such an arduous process, and requires so much dedication and time training, there is no way someone who goes through that would forget it. My marathon time was 3:54, and I’ll remember it til I die. That clock you see as you approach the finish in more pain than you can fathom gets seared into your brain. Ryan just doesn’t respect the truth very much, its as simple as that.
satanaugustine
September 6, 2012 at 12:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve known people who, like Ryan in this case, lie for no discernible reason whatsoever. It gains them nothing. It’s easily falsified. It causes them repeated personal problems. But they do it again and again. Sometimes they don’t even lie to make themselves look good, though they often do. It’s almost as though their bodies’ release huge amounts of dopamine and endorphin every time they lie, so they get high on lying. It’s completely bizarre to me, but it would seem that there has to be something reinforcing that repeated lying. Maybe Paul Ryan is one of those people.
deborahbell
September 6, 2012 at 1:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A couple things come to mind. It could be a mistake, on the “57 states” order. More likely, it could be a matter of knowingly fudging – lying – but not knowing what was a good time. So it would be on the order of the time I told my boyfriend my boss scolded me, with a spiel that lasted five minutes and repeated it five times and he asked why I stood there for 25 minutes and I realized I had exaggerated somewhere and revised my story. Knowingly exaggerating athletic achievements is common, especially among amateurs. And then there’s the pathological liar possibility, which has been covered. One of my good friends is married to a guy with a problem like that. She told me once of him lying to a stranger about now long he had been in the military; he exaggerated ony by a year and it bothered it because it didn’t help
anything; and the older gentleman he lied to would have been just as pleased with the truth.
blf
September 6, 2012 at 3:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
When you get your facts from the bargain- and damaged-bins from a Make Your Own Reality™ shop, they come without any guarantee of plausibility. Mr Lying could have at least picked a less-easily-debunked claim, there’s a large selection of both new and recycled private realities available. The new ones require some effort to debunk, and the recycled ones are reliable oldies widely fallen-for.
dingojack
September 6, 2012 at 3:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“When you get your facts from the bargain- and damaged-bins from a Make Your Own Reality™ shop…”
Sounds like a short-story by Phillip K Dick or Spider Robinson.
Dingo
ebohlman
September 6, 2012 at 7:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ryan’s claim is actually plausible, assuming that finish time is defined as the moment that any part of the runner’s body crosses the finish line. The tip of Ryan’s nose would have crossed the finish line long before the rest of his body would have.
democommie
September 6, 2012 at 8:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@30:
I’m going to stick with Paulie Wingnuts for now, but “Paul Lyan” has a certain ring to it–with the caveat that he might be confused, in certain quarters, with Dr. Ron.
“The guy is not a runner so the numbers don’t carry the same meaning for him, all he cared about was finishing.”
Bullshit.
If you’re not a “runner”, you won’t be IN a marathon, never mind finish it–unless it’s a pick-up race.
Sanctioned marathons, IIRC, require that all participants have run at least a half marathon in the recent past. The Boston Marathon requires that its entrants have a certified finish (3:10 for men and 3:40 for women aged 18-34*) in a previous marathon–and it still attracts over 10,000 participants.
Ryan’s a known physical fitness buff, he also is a guy who claims to be big on things like BUDGET NUMBERS. I’m pretty sure he knows what the calorie count is in the bagel with a schmear that one of his staff just ordered. He’s a numbers guy, right?
stace
September 6, 2012 at 8:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Narcissistic personality disorder more likely, it seems to afflict many GOP vice-presidential candidates in recent times.
democommie
September 6, 2012 at 8:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Narcissistic personality disorder more likely, it seems to afflict many GOP vice-presidential candidates in recent times.”
Hey, now. Let’s be fair; in Mittmoroni’s case it may be MPLoPD*.
* Narcissistic Lack of Personality Disorder.
democommie
September 6, 2012 at 8:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
NLoPD!
Reginald Selkirk
September 6, 2012 at 9:27 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The kid could be a budding politician. Maybe he will be the next Lyin’ Ryan.
democommie
September 7, 2012 at 4:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Looks like Paulie Wingnuts might be fibbin’ on more than one front.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-family-wealth-11644997
Were these people watching the same debate I was?
October 13, 2012 at 10:32 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
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