Except among the Keanu Reeves crowd, the meaning of "radical" is commonly understood—extremist, dismissive of how things work in the workaday world and favoring change that borders on the fantastical. In today’s etymology lesson, however, we learn that "radical" stems from the Latin word for "root"; it originally had connotations of returning to basic principles. By definition, a radical is interested not in pie in the sky, but in ground truths.

The word "elite" has suffered much the same transmogrification. R.W. Apple, Jr. recently wrote in the New York Times, " ‘Elite’ is one of the dirtiest words in the lexicon of American politics, and those who are suspected of having a mansion instead of a log cabin lurking in their backgrounds feel the need to hide it with ostentatious symbols of the common touch." Apple’s observation extends beyond politics. Dan Quayle caught flak for dissing Murphy Brown, but his denouncement in that infamous speech of a "cultural elite" struck a nerve that still twinges. You know who he’s talking about—those PBS-watching, syrah-sipping, out-of-touchniks who regularly gather in faculty lounges and newsrooms to plan flag burnings. In nearly all of American society, to be called an elitist is meant as a put-down. It’s an accusation of snobbery, a charge that your ivory-tower preoccupations blind you to the everyday struggles of the silent majority.

That’s definitely the case in running. These days, pretty much anyone who can break 6:00 for a mile is wrongly called an elite runner. There’s a certain misplaced awe in the naming: "Must be nice," people will say as you pass them on the trail, as if you’re not bound by the same laws of gravity and inertia that they are. More predominant in the classification, though, is the opinion that faster runners are utterly contemptuous of all who can’t keep pace. With their focus on fleetness, it’s said, elitists disregard the motives and accomplishments of the great mass of today’s runners.

Well, as that elitist-cum-faux-populist Richard Nixon would put it, let me say this about that: I’m sorry, but I missed the part where appreciating the efforts of those who do a difficult thing well makes one disdainful toward others who try but fall short of perfection. My dad is a jazz aficionado. His knowledge is vast and his standards are high. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t attend every single squawking concert when I was in the school band. Nor does it mean that art critics don’t put their kids’ finger paintings on the refrigerator, or that literature professors don’t cherish mushy love letters. Properly understood, being an elitist means having a broad, meritocracy-based appreciation of a given discipline that demands bringing different expectations to different expressions.

Where is the evidence that those of us who crave reports of Haile Gebresilasie’s latest Herculean labors spend our time telling slower runners not to bother? After a race, the top finishers often head back to the course to cool down as others are in their last miles. In two decades of doing this, I’ve never seen someone cooling down say to someone still racing, "You suck. Go home." Instead, in nearly every such case, the faster runners cheer the slower ones, with those well-meant claims of "Looking good" and "It’s not far now" that we, too, don’t believe for one second when we’re racing.

At the 1993 Marine Corps Marathon, my then-girlfriend completed her first 26.2-miler in about 4:30. I cried as she finished; this was a tremendous accomplishment for someone with little athletic background, a busy job and a pell-mell approach to training. But I didn’t equate her run with that of the women’s race winner, who had finished 100 minutes before. I knew that, in the months before the race, the winner had devoted hundreds more hours to the day’s cause than had my girlfriend. It was my elitism, not schizophrenia, that allowed me to appreciate her run while celebrating my girlfriend’s.

After all, just like everybody else, elitists have to put up with bonehead bosses, sick kids and nasty weather. We’re all too well aware of the innumerable intrusions that get in the way of our miles; we feel fortunate, not holier than thou, when we overcome them. In our sometimes-maddeningly objective sport, I don’t think myself to be anything special, not only because I have to work very hard even to be as mediocre as I am, but also because I know that, right now, someone is training at my race pace. All that being the case, my fascination with worldbeaters does nothing to lessen my empathy for the jogger down the street. If anything, the two complement one another, so that I see all runners as necessary ingredients in a rich stew.

What a radical notion.