Hey guys,

So a video popped up on my facebook stream a couple of days ago regarding a marathon runner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ngym4Z2SPw.

The story basically is that during the Austin marathon, a female runner from Kenya who was leading for a majority of the race hit the so called 'wall' where she couldn't run anymore.

Instead of giving up she refused to let herself fail and literally crawled over the finish line.

Now I think showing this kind of perseverance merits the highest respect but lauding her is not what I want to do with this post.

Instead, I want to draw attention to a few comments made by people on my facebook feed.

Most comments on the youtube video are actually surprisingly positive (for the most part), but my facebook feed looked slightly different. It was divided into roughly two categories:

The first was mostly fit, young, athletic, succesfull (in their own right at the very least) men, with a couple of fit young pre-wall women thrown in the mix, but only a couple. This category had nothing but respect for the runner.

The second was post-wall, overweight, unhealthy looking and downright unattractive women. All of them had nothing but scorn for the race officials for allowing this women to "put herself in mortal danger due to dehydration" and other such reasons. Some even went a bit further, calling the runner various versions of 'insane' for putting herself at risk.

Putting aside the fact that the race officials know full well what they were doing and that the woman wasn't actually in a lot of danger at all, and the little risk she took was willingly, what struck me the most was the difference between mentalities.

The succesfull people, and sometimes less succesfull men were happy to see somebody else succeed and admired the result. There was very little jealousy even if the person in question accomplished something that they themselves could not. Note that the men who were less succesfull than her also admired her result and respected her.

However, the only women who gave her respect were women who considered themselves just as succesfull, or more so, than this female runner.

What I took away from this, and I think you should too, is that men (especially alpha men) want other men to succeed, regardless of their own success. Women on the other hand only want women to succeed as long as they don't succeed more than they do. The moment that happens they become jealous, unpleasant creatures, hamstering away their jealousy and blaming circumstances for letting the other women triumph.

I think it is important to foster this sense of respect for other peoples success, and I view it as a trait of alpha men.