Complaints about realism (response)

To those that complain that this movie had unrealistic bits.

So What.

Saint Ralph managed to capture the essence of running and the training and striving involved with running better than any movie I've seen. While many things were not strictly real, the essence of them were very nearly spot on.

To the "joggers" on this board who've completed marathons, (and I don't mean this in a derogatory way) there is a world of difference between that and training/striving to WIN a marathon. While I don't feel that the specific workout contents should be important to the value of this film, 20x1mile is a perfectly reasonable workout for marathon training (though, these days it may more likely be something along the lines of 10x2mile or 5x5k or 3x10k).

For those that object to a young high school kid in the 50s racing against the worlds best: have you ever heard of Bruce Kidd, Jim Ryun, or Gerry Lindgren?

Lindgren may be the best analog of this bunch. A skinny wimpy insecure (and perhaps mentally ill, though that's neither here nor there) kid who attempted to redeem himself (in his view of his abusive father's eyes) by becoming a great runner. He did training no one else in the world was attempting (300 mile weeks, huge quantities of sprinting, 60 mile runs up and down Mt. Spokane), and as a high schooler beat the best that the US and USSR had to offer in the 10000m race at the US v. USSR dual meet. Does this sound like unrealistic fiction?

How many people get worked up about the "unrealistic" bits from "Field of Dreams"?

Gosh people....