When I was growing up, one of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld was “The Hot Tub.” If you haven’t seen it, all you need to know for this post is that Jean Paul is a marathoner who infamously missed the Barcelona Olympics because he overslept. Thanks to Jerry, he almost does it again before the 1995 New York City Marathon.
I rewatched this episode last night and boy did it give me anxiety. Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I set about 25 alarms the morning before the 2018 NYC Marathon. But today, I couldn’t stop thinking about what this fictional marathoner would have been capable of if he had just woken up on time.
Want to overanalyze this with me? Here goes nothing!
But First, Some Serious Suspension of Disbelief
There are a few things I think we should acknowledge before we get too deep into this “analysis” of Seinfeld’s Jean Paul.
- First, it’s completely absurd that an Olympic-level marathoner would travel to New York alone without a coach or a handler and stay with a complete stranger on the Upper East Side
- Also, Jerry and Jean Paul wake up at 8:47 on the morning of the marathon. We’ll pretend that it wouldn’t be impossible to drive from the Upper East Side to Staten Island in under 20 minutes
- In the final scene, Jean Paul’s race comes to a screeching halt when he confuses Kramer’s hot tea for a Gatorade. We know that elites have their own personalized water bottles at specific aid stations, but will also erase that knowledge from our brains for now
With that out of the way, we need to answer just a couple questions, especially since we don’t see much else of the race in this episode.
How on Earth Was Jean Paul Leading the Elite Race at Central Park?
Even though Jerry manages to get Jean Paul to the race, the elites are long gone and he’s forced to start with the everyday shmos like me. Imagine Lelisa Desisa looking at tens of thousands of people in a corral and saying, “OK, this is fine.” Yeah, I can’t either.
At first glance, this looks like something we should add to our list of things to disregard. But we’re actually going to factor this into our breakdown of Jean Paul’s ability to win the race.
According to NYRR’s website, the 1995 NYC Marathon began at 9 AM. Let’s assume that the first wave of “ordinary” runners started at this year’s start time of 9:50 AM. In this scenario, Jean Paul would have started his race 50 minutes after the rest of the elite field. And yet in the final scene of the episode, we are supposed to believe that Jean Paul is leading the pack by the time he gets to Central Park.
I’m notoriously bad at math, but I’m going to take a shot here. We’ll also assume that Jean Paul is entering Central Park just before he douses himself with hot tea. That would put us at around Mile 24. Here are a few things to consider:
- German Silva won the 1995 NYC Marathon in 2:11 (Average pace of 5 minutes per mile according to NYRR)
- At 5 minutes per mile, Silva would have hit the mile 24 marker at around 11 AM that morning
- To catch Silva after a 50 minute head start, a real-life Jean Paul would have had to get to the 24 mile marker in 1 hour and 10 minutes, or around 2 minutes and 54 seconds per mile
Based on that rough math, it’s clear that Jean Paul could have easily won the 1995 New York City Marathon. In fact, you could argue that Kramer’s hot tea was a much bigger sin than Jerry failing to wake him up on time. Maybe Jerry made it a more even playing field by getting Jean Paul there so late.
But it also begs another question.
Was Jean Paul Our Best Shot at Breaking Two Hours?
Of course the answer to this question is no. Eliud Kipchoge barely missed in Nike’s Breaking2 project. But I can’t help but wonder what the worldwide reaction would be if someone ran the New York City Marathon at Jean Paul’s projected pace. Would we immediately assume he was doping? And honestly, if someone were to run a marathon in less than 80 minutes, would anyone really care if he were doping?
Me? I’d probably watch highlights on YouTube every day for the rest of my life. If a real-life Jean Paul promoted an electrolyte drink, I’d buy a pallet of it tomorrow. And even though a bunch of people on Twitter would scream about the integrity of the sport, let’s be honest. We’d all pay a lot of money to watch someone run just one mile in 2 minutes and 54 seconds.
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