What an elitist comment. People do marathons for different reasons. Time is just one factor. Some people actually (gasp) do marathons to prove something to _themselves_.

It's one thing to be proud of your own time, it's entirely unsportsmanlike to criticize someone not as good as you.

I understand what you're getting at but I think you may have misunderstood me. Being able to run a marathon in 3 hours probably meant you set aside a hour or two, 5 times a week for years. Walking a marathon in 7 hours means that your in the sort of shape that is required to not die early from being sedentary.

If you tell me you RAN a marathon, I'll think that you RAN a marathon. If you walked a marathon and you think that's a great accomplishment (and it very well may be), I'm also very happy for you. But it's not the same thing. Conflating the two is dishonest and devalues what others are doing. It's the difference between building a website as a fullstack dev vs building one using Square Space. It's not that there's anything wrong with Square Space, but if you tell me your a software engineer afterwards, I'll think of you the same way I think of marathon walkers who tell me they ran a marathon.

Marathons? I have people tell me this for 5ks.

It is racing for them.