I had worked with Dr. Sheehan at a newspaper where he was an in-residence columnist. Although tangentially centered on running, Dr. Sheehan used his sport primarily to access "the zone" in order to clarify his thinking and being.

He often used the writings of his favorites, Emerson and Thoreau, as starting points for his own philosophical musings. When he became terminally ill, he wrote a series of poignant and insightful columns sharing the dying process.

I believe that Mr. Noah's depiction of Governor Palin's interest in his writing as shallow shows a lack of understanding of what Dr. Sheehan was all about. Perhaps Noah should have researched his body of work before coming to a faulty conclusion about both him and Palin's interest in him.

as a longtime runner and runner's world reader, i'm familiar with sheehan's enthusiastic promotion of the religious aspects of distance running.
his columns helped transform the "jogging fad" into a genuine cultural force, but his exclusive focus on the spiritual benefits of running became laughable over the years (eg, "trust no thought not arrived at while running," etc) is it so amazing that running is not particularly different from biking, swimming or walking?

Or did she just read about his cult?