Excerpted from a recent email Whitney Tilson sent to investors. Obviously Tilson is being a bit sarcastic. See Tilson is his words below.
With my (first annual) 49th birthday coming up on Sunday (and my hair greying and thinning), I’m of course going through a full-blown midlife crisis, which has manifested itself in various physical challenges: two weekends letting Navy SEALs brutalize me, running six Spartan and Tough Mudder races since April, a plan to climb the Matterhorn next July, etc.
So, I suppose it’s not surprising that as I awoke this morning, I was having a dream about running the NYC Marathon, which also happens to be on Sunday. I checked my calendar and have nothing going on, so I thought, “Why not?”
(Well, actually there are plenty of reasons, starting with the fact that I’ve never run a road race longer than a 10k in my life and have exactly three days to train. Despite this, it’s not quite as crazy as it appears. I’ve been training very hard for the past 15 months for the various events noted above, which has me in the best shape of my life. A week and a half ago, I ran 15 miles in 3½ hours, wet and freezing cold, in a Tough Mudder race, which included lots of hills and obstacles, so I figure I should be OK on Sunday.)
My favorite charity (along with KIPP) is the Robin Hood Foundation, which fields a team to run the marathon every year – and someone on their team had to drop out, so I’m doing it!
Ways you can help Whitney Tilson
You can help me in the following ways:
1) Give me lots of encouragement on the racecourse! I’m bib #44958 and you can track my progress by downloading the NYC Marathon app and entering this number.
2) Donate to Robin Hood on my fundraising page: https://www.crowdrise.com/whitneytilson. Consider it a joint marathon/birthday present.
I just donated $100/mile ($2,620), plus to give me motivation to run faster, I’ll donate an extra $10 for every minute that I finish faster than 4:22 (that’s my target finish time: a 10-min mile for 26.2 miles) (secretly though, I’d love to break four hours!). I hope you’ll consider also making a variable donation to give me extra incentive (just think: your money will not only go to a great cause, but lead to more suffering by me!).
3) Recommend your favorite running/workout song so I can download it onto my phone to listen to during the race.
Thank you!
Whitney Tilson
PS—This will be me at the finish line (hopefully minus the mud!):
