Are the great running magazines dying?

News broke this week that Marathon and Beyond will cease publication after it issues its December 2015 edition. The magazine occupied an interesting niche in the marketplace, opting for long-form articles that delved more deeply into the subject matter - whether it was a particular marathon or training story - than the quick blurbs that appear elsewhere.  The reason editor Richard Benyo offered was the transition in the readership from a print-based clientele to the digital consumer. While they still maintained a core of people who loved the magazine, the total numbers eroded year-by-year to the point where the magazine was no longer a viable business concern.

They aren't alone in feeling the pinch. Last year,  Running Times, my favorite magazine, announced that they were cutting their offering from ten issues per year to six. Even Runner's World is cutting, going from twelve to eleven this year.

To anyone watching the state of American newspapers, or the rise of indie publishing, this comes as no real surprise, though it is sad. The magazines, as with the newspapers, have yet to figure out how to fully monetize their content. Indeed, by publishing their content to the websites, often within days of the print version arriving at the subscriber's home, they actively devalue their business.

“We feel its [Marathon and Beyond] decline can be attributed to the move (especially among younger runners) to digital formats while at the same time the traditional long attention span of the running demographic has been undermined by new media,” Banyo wrote to Runner's World.

The digital formats share several things in common. First, and most importantly to the readers, it is free. Why should they wait for a print copy that they eventually will throw away, when they can have the same information, plus save ten bucks a year? Efforts at establishing firewalls work only when the content is so unique that readers willingly pay for it. In the case of the running mags, they don't have that quality. Much of the material that they publish is regurgitated from past issues. Want to know how to run a faster 5K? Google it (or Bing, which is what I use) and you get 18 million results. The best nutrition for a runner? 8 million, with two of the top ten linking to Runner's World articles. Which leads us to the second problem . . .

The internet is forever. All those articles will be there long after the magazines fail. In fact, it's fun to compare articles from five years ago to today's - the similarities are striking. When the magazines turned over subscriber bases, they did so on about a two year cycle, making it advantageous to rerun the same types of articles because the newest readers would not recognize the repetition. That's no longer the case.

Another part of the M&B statement interested me: that the attention span of the newest readers degraded to 140 characters. This leads to quick 250 words bits of fluff that do little more than announce a study or give a headline. At the websites, you can see the transition to this in the manner that they lay out the articles. A picture, a headline, one sentence of information. I would love to know the click-through rates.

None of this is good news for the running magazines (and they aren't alone.) For books, though, the dynamic is different. The disintermediation that is taking place makes it more advantageous to write books, especially those that approach the subject from a different angle.

Thus, we see more memoirs of runners appearing, from Nick Symmond's Life Outside the Oval Office to Rand Mitzner's Thirty-three Years of Running in Circles to Dave Clark's Out There. In Running: A Long-distance Love Affair, Shawn Hacking added the sound track to follow the story. JOCK: a memoir of the counter-culture, by Robert Coe, puts the history of the sixties into the context of his running career at Stanford.

Jack Welch put together a collection of his work from Running Magazine in When Running Was Young and So Were We, as we take a look back at the golden era of American running.

 There's always been a wealth of how-to's in running, but I wonder how much longer they will continue without any real changes in the underlying science. Some will continue to proliferate, mostly on the basis of athlete celebrity, but with the same information available for free, the need for them diminishes by the day.

In the fiction category, we see a little movement, too. There are, of course, my two books and more on the way. Bill Kenley put out High School Runner: Freshman. John Parker put out the wonderful Racing the Rain to complete the Quenton Cassidy saga.

While it looks bleak for the magazines, the future seems bright for authors of longer works. I've queried a dozen magazine for articles from Kenya, with no replies. While it would be nice to have a paying gig while I'm there, the raw material for the articles (there were about four different takes on Kenya that I wanted to explore) can still be used for a book or two. Plus the fiction that I'll generate from the trip.

I'm sad to see M&B go, but the running world will still have its own literature. It might be tweet length and book length with little in-between, but as long as there are runners who are also creators, we'll find a way to communicate.

Done Coaching, So Now I Can Cheer

GSL (Greater Spokane League - 3A) Mead/Ferris/SP/MSHS

The junior high season at Asotin ended on the 13th, so I had some time to go watch the older kids racing. I was at Mead in Spokane on Wednesday and at Clarkston for the District 9 meet Saturday.

The Mead meet was right after school and the GSL women's championship was on the line, with the hosts in contention. Last year it rained, a slow cold drizzle. The sunshine and sixty degrees temps were a substantial improvement.

After the JV races, the women took to the line. The emotional leader of the team, Rayanna, kept the ladies focused on getting ready for the race. Once it started, a cold bug kept her from having the race she hoped for. She ran with a lot of guts

Teammate Hannah Tomeo went out with the Mt. Spokane ladies at Coach Dori Whitford's direction. As Dori said, she "wanted to give her more than one way to race." To often, the coaches aren't teaching racing strategy, turning a foot race into a horse race. Yet, as Rono and Lindgren proved, strategy has a place in cross country and forcing your opponent into mistakes can lead to satisfying victories.

In the end, the top three Mt. Spokane ran away from the Mead ladies. Mead took the next four spots. A pretty good dose of dominance by both programs. Something that should cheer the Mead ladies - Mt. Spokane graduates two of those top three. Mead has their top six back and several JV girls nearly ready to step up to help the squad.

The men's race was more balanced, but Ferris edged Mead. Mt. Spokane runner Hayden Dressel took the lead from the start, but his team was never in serious contention. The real battle occurred in the 2-5 positions with a pair of Ferris runners, Erik Holm and Amir Ado, running stride for stride with a pair of Mead men, Will Medellin and Cameron Dean. Will, who was also in the creative writing class I taught earlier in the day, pushed against the Ferris pair, holding onto them for the entire race, with Cameron a few steps back. Behind them, a trio of Mead men tried to close on a quartet from Ferris.

The race at the front came down to a hard chase and kick. Will Medellin managed to get past Ado and Dean did as well. Into the final stretch, Holm led those two, and then launched a kick. Dean unleashed a huge kick of his own, caught Holm and captured the number two spot. Medellin didn't have quite the same finishing speed but fought like heck anyway. I love watching athletes leave it on the course.

District 9 - 2B Meet

Back on home turf, I got to cheer for kids that I coached and some that ran with my daughters. I think this is the last year I can say that. Time moves quickly - the Asotin assistant coach, Jessie Johnson, was a teammate of my middle daughter.

Photo courtesy of Suzy Cowdrey

Girls raced first and Asotin was expected to win the team title. A pack of four ran away from the rest of the field, led by Anna Ruthven of DeSales. Emily Adams stayed hard on her heels, and Carmen Eggleston and Maia Dykstra maintained contact. Mykayla Miller from Pomeroy, Celeste Davis of TCP, and Kat Stephenson (Asotin) formed the next group. Lauren Ruthven (DeSales) and Adriana Bernal (TCP) held position, and then a wave of orange crested as the rest of the Asotin Panthers flew by on the outbound leg of the course.

On the return part of that leg, before the big hill, Ruthven held the lead on Adams by about 20 meters. The Asotin freshman pair had split apart (Maia Dykstra was running with a lingering cold) with Eggleston in front. Forty meters behind them were Davis and Miller. Another gap appeared before Stephenson, running strong, popped into view. It would be nearly a minute before the next runner showed up.

Photo courtesy of Suzy Cowdrey

By the bottom of the hill Adams had closed the gap on Ruthven to a few seconds. Midway up the hill, she through on a hard surge topass the DeSales lady. The change in Emily Adams over the course of the season has been impressive. She's learned to race, and when to take chances to bust open a lead. Ruthven took second with Eggleston locking in third place. Dykstra, despite the cold, battled her way up the hill on guts to hang onto fourth, holding off another freshman, Mykayla Miller. Freshman Celeste Davis trailed in Miller.

Samantha Nicholas stirred the local crowd with a terrific kick and Paiton Vargas, in a bit of a surprise, was the number five runner for Asotin as she seems to be figuring out the whole racing part of running. All eight Asotin ladies placed in the top fifteen.

In all, freshmen captured four of the top six placements. Something that should worry other teams is that Asotin does not have a senior in their top eight. Four are freshmen, four are juniors. The Panthers appear poised for an extended run at the podium. Pomeroy also has a very young team and a growing tradition.

The men's race didn't resolve itself so quickly. Asotin and TCP were in the mix for the team title. The strength of the TCP program under Scott Larsen has always been the quality of the runners, top to bottom. He does a really nice job of bringing them along, and in good numbers, so that the middle of his pack never has a hole that a competing team can take advantage of. TCP put seven runners in the top sixteen to win the race, but only by a point as Asotin did a nice job of scoring.

Kenneth Rooks was the overall winner, and Thomas Weakland led the Panther squad. Third went to DeSales Daniel Ness, fourth to TCP's Phillip Geist, and fifth to Asotin freshman Eli Engledow. Landon Callas of Waitsburg-Prescott finished in sixth. TCP began to flex the mid-pack muscle with Cesar Robles and Thomas Mercer leading the way, Spencer Williams of Asotin in pursuit. Senior Nate Prior would be the next Asotin finisher, in twelfth place. TCP put four consecutive harriers across the line to seal the race. Thomas Martin, another promising Asotin freshman, closed out the scoring for the Panthers.  

Photo courtesy of Suzy Cowdrey

Next week, and presumably at State, these team will meet again. Podium spots and bragging rights will be on the line.

Riverside State Park, Spokane

In what is becoming a personal tradition, I am in Spokane today to visit the creative writing class taught by Dori Whitford at Mead High School. Dori, who doubles as the women's cross country coach, became a fan when Finishing Kick first came out in Running Times. She sent an email to let me know what she thought of the novel, one thing led to the next, and now I come up on a regular basis to talk to the students.

As always, they, the kids, are interesting. They had some questions pre-written for me to work with and some were really interesting. One, what is my favorite thing to write about, actually put me on the spot, mostly because I told them the truth. I like writing about teenagers. I think they were expecting me to say 'about running.' Understandable.  I think the age is fascinating - NOT that I want to go back and repeat it. I told them that, too.

About half of the class would like to write in the future and, to a person, would like to write fiction. My kind of kids. They did split on whether they prefer pen and paper or typing right into the computer. Advantages to both but it was interesting to see how they broke down. It seemed most of the pen and paper kids also liked plotting out the stories. Most are into fantasy with a smattering of thriller and mystery readers, too.

Afterwards, I went traipsing around Riverside State Park, taking off on a five mile run from the Carlson Road Trailhead. Absolutely gorgeous.

The day was a little crisper than I had prepped for - 42 degrees and I had geared out for about ten degrees warmer. Oops. Ran with what I had and figured it was good for triggering my brown fat. Not too bad once I got moving.

I had a choice of dropping down and running by the Spokane River or hill-running. Being a glutton for work, I ground my way up. There's a whole network of trails, mostly well marked. All the ones I hit had good footing though a couple of stretches had enough rock that I paid attention, lest I land in the emergency room. The pictures are from today's run.

Mother Nature's way of taking out over-tall, and inattentive, runners.

Asotin Bird Sanctuary

No running today. Instead, I got in a four mile hike with a son-in-law, traipsing through the Asotin Bird Sanctuary. Technically named the inelegant Asotin Slough, the locals call it the Bird Sanctuary and it's part of the runs we do with the junior high kids a couple of times a year.

Looking south to Riverpointe, one of the higher end communities in town. I don't live there. My abode is more modest, and leans a bit to one side.

From Chief Looking Glass Park, you can follow Corps of Engineer land east along the river to get to there. (If you are, please remember that you're traversing people's backyards.) When you get to the osprey nest (tall pole, big nest, can't miss it,) drop down to the river to pick up some single track.

 Not being in a hurry, we chatted along the way. None of my son-in-laws are runners, though all three are outdoorsmen. The pace was conducive to a relaxing vent. I had a few (they were going to frame today's post, but life interfered, in the pleasant way.) Will, the son-in-law that was with me today, used to work for me long before me married my middle daughter, and he's used to some of my peculiarities, like adding running commentary to audiobooks.

Looking up the Snake River from the SE corner of Asotin. Hells Canyon lay that direction, the deepest step canyon in North America.

We spotted - Will spotted - a pair of deer, does, as we left the boat launch area and entered a lightly wooded section. A couple had already bounded past with their graceful and bouncy gait. These watched us and then slowly sauntered away, mostly unconcerned. This trail is the same one that I brought the kids on a couple of weeks ago. At the start of the season, only four could run that far and get back at the end of practice. At the end of the season, it was more than a dozen. 

We broke out from under cover and stuck to the faded trails. Before the Corps had put in a bypass for the river to ensure that the flow, well, flowed correctly and that stagnate water was minimized, this used to be a favorite running route. With the channel, it's more challenging. summers aren't bad as the channel they built is dry, but winters see bank to bank water that necessitates fording in icy currents. I usually find other runs.

The single track follows along the river bank for another half-mile before it peters out in a mix of deer trails near a couple of white sandy beaches. The Corps tried planting (I'm assuming) native trees. The soils here lack nutrients and the annual rainfall matches that of a desert. The trees, shall we say, failed to thrive. Now, they look like random twigs stuck in the ground, marked by square red flags on wire sticks to mark their passing.

We looped over the far end of the new channel, working our way down the river rubble embankments and crossing to the side of the sanctuary that borders the highway. Once upon a time, the cross country team would head out to Snake River Road. A couple of close calls from speeding drivers who approach the road as though it were Le Mans, and that adventure got cut short. It's a shame we can't trust the drivers as the views up the river are spectacular.

Will and I came back along the trail I used the one -only!- time I swam the Snake River. Along with a few bruises from hitting unseen boulders, I got a first-hand appreciation of the power of the river that I used in my book, Trail of Second Chances. (an aside - I am offering free Kindle copies of Trail in return for honest reviews.)  The path wound its way past the basalt formations, and ducked through a low smattering of trees. 

In the shade of the trees, we came across a box bolted into the basalt rock. Narrow in depth, but wide, it took me a second to recognize it. Will, trained as a biologist, was much quicker. "For bats," he said. It made sense and was preferably to having the bats establish residence in the attics of local homes.

I come across bats on an infrequent basis, and almost always as a surprise. The town that I've found them in most, locally, would be Potlatch, Idaho, about 25 minutes north of Moscow. In one year, I found bats in four separate homes. They typically don't bother the inspectors, but homeowners are not fans of these particular types of freeloaders. Still, I find them preferable to termites, and in their own way, kind of cute. Definitely interesting.  . .

The trail came back into open ground as we head back to my house. We had some warning, seeing the head of a doe rising, dropping in front of us. I slowed up to see if maybe I could get a clear picture (I was using the great-grandson of the Indestructible Camera.) Luck was with me, plus I think the deer, understanding Will and I were unarmed, posed.

In all, a pleasant walk. I think the ratio ran to three deer per mile, with assorted birdlife (jay, magpies, sparrows) sprinkled in for seasoning. No snakes, which was fine with me, and a sun that came out and made me sweat the last mile.

Over the Weekend . . .

Deena Kastor, a favorite of mine, went out and broke the American Women’s marathon record, taking nearly a minute off of Colleen DeReuck’s ten-year-old standard with a sterling 2:27:47. More surprising, she was the first American female finisher. Makes you wonder what’s wrong with the ‘kids’.

I spent Saturday with the folks at the Spokane Marathon, hand-selling and signing books. Not a surprise, I sold a bunch. These are my people. The staff was fun to hang with and treat to talk to. I had a table next to Niki Sibley, who was handing out free coffee from Chamokane Creek Trading Company, a business that she owns with her husband.(Yes, I got some coffee. A Brazilian. Will sip and savor when I get a little down time, then report back.) Niki, an ultrarunner who’s run across the state of Washington, is an incredibly upbeat young lady. I learned a lot from chatting with her. She doubled as the RD of the 10K.

Pay attention! Here's some wonderful advice from Mel. The Spokane Marathon was his 453rd marathon!!!! He started competing in marathons in his 50's. #NoExcuses #AcceptTheChallenge

Posted by The Spokane Marathon on Sunday, October 11, 2015

A gentleman named Mel was the final finisher in Spokane. It was his 453rd marathon. His advice? “When the ol’ rocking chair’s got you, get up and go for a run.”

I met Lori Shauvin. She introduced herself as the "Grandmother of Spokane Cross Country." For more than two decades, she's been taking teams to the Footlocker Cross Country meet in San Diego. Lori's been so dedicated to the kids, and for so long, that she was inducted into the FootlockerXC Hall of Fame. If you don't think that's a big deal, go look at who else is in there. Very neat lady, very strong-willed. Behave or the 'Grandmother' will set you right.

Chicago ran without pacesetters. The reaction on the LetsRun board is mixed. Some love the racing, others think anything less than a world record (or at least the attempt) is worthless. Put me down in the "I love racing" category.

After spending so much time with the race staff and the competitors, I thinking that I should actually train for something. Just don't know what.

Run gently, friends, while I figure it out.

Some racing taking place in District 9 XC - And Chicago drops pacers

Once upon a time when running in the US was just starting to boom, they held races. By today's standards, they were odd little events. The participants numbered in the hundreds, not the thousands, and pacers were unheard-of.

That changed, first with Bannister's brilliant run to finally break the barrier of 4 minutes with the help of teammates Brashear and Caraway. From then, a steady evolution led to almost all major races having a pacer or a 'rabbit.'

In the opinion of many old-timers (who undoubtedly hate being called that), it's retarded the development of the sport, making it a boring affair of sit-and-kick. Gone from the racing world were the major breaks and tactical pace changes that forced the opposition to compensate.

This hit home last week as I watched the women's race at the Bulldog Invite, held at Big Cross in Pasco. For the second week in a row, I watched Emily Adams (Waitsburg-Prescott) hide for the first mile, before launching an attack and cracking open the front of the pack. The break she made at Pasco won the district race for her. Once she gained that lead, she never relinquished it. By the same token, she didn't increase it in the last mile.

Rather than sit-and-kick, Emily made a transition to a racer, broke the lead pack and dared them to match or catch her. Moves like that, reminiscent of the wild pace changes that Henry Reno used to utilized to break his competitors,  make for exciting racing. The Asotin girls are going to need to learn to cover that break out to be close enough at the end to challenge Emily.

Now Chicago is breaking with modern tradition and telling the lead pack they're on their own. It's their race, to win, to lose, on the strength of their legs, lungs, and tactics.

We'll see who still remembers how to really race.

An Apt Metaphor for Running in an Engaging Style

Shawn Hacking writes from the heart in his book, Running: A Long Distance Love Affair. The affair he describes is no longer the hot and urgent passion of the young, but mellower with the acquisition of age and, perhaps, a touch of wisdom.

Running: A Long Distance Love Affair is a quick read, humorous at times, questioning at others, with the strong voice of an author who can tell a story. Built as a series of short chapters, mostly in chronological order, Hacking takes time to anchor each piece in time, both as a runner and in the calendar. The latter he does with a nifty decision to provide a sound track for his book, building a music list a new addition for each chapter. As someone who grew up in nearly the same generation, the memories evoked brought more than one smile.

Funny enough, my daughters would recognize a lot of the tracks and own some of the music.

As with other runners, Hacking came to it from another sport. He first began to run to get into shape for football. He doesn’t mention if he ever played—I know several folks who did both in high school. He did, however, excel right from the start as a runner. By his junior season, he was breaking meet records, and aiming for state records, no mean feat.

Running: A Long Distance Love Affair alternates from the biographical to the reflective. Stories of Henry Rono get offset by a look at the late George Sheehan. As Hacking readily admits, Rono’s belief in the strength gained against the hill held more sway to him than Sheehan’s admonitions to find the play in running. I remember, imperfectly I’m sure, Sheehan commenting on beginning to run to get fit, and then to race. And when the races were over, he discovered that he was a runner again, before asking, in his final days, “Was it enough?”

Younger runners don’t have these questions, but Hacking’s book nudges up to some of these same thoughts. Yet, he manages to capture the beauty of running young and strong, when glory seems possible and the body is indestructible, at the same time. This juxtaposition, intentional or not, brings out the nature of the love affair and how apt the metaphor of running to a love affair truly is.

KenSAP

Research seems to lead me in funny directions. In the midst of tackling something totally different, I came across KenSAP, a project put together by Olympian and Professor at Kenyatta University, Mike Boit, and John Manners, formerly a journalist with Time magazine.

The organization, the Kenya Scholar-Athlete Program, started by finding a half-dozen students in the Rift Valley with promising academic credentials. Mike Boit identified them and John Manners gave them the preparation to deal with the SAT and the application process. Of that first six, five went on to attend top-notch American universities, including three to Harvard, the men realized they had found a means of making large and positive life-altering changes for their charges.

Since 2004 when they first started, they have put 117 students into the American university system. Unlike American athletes who often are given a soft glide into college (and sometimes, it extends in college, as recent revelations of massive fraud at UNC demonstrates), the Kenyan students must score in the top one percent on the tests that the country uses for students to successfully exit high school. Unsurprisingly, their success rate in the United States soars above that of the general populations of the various school. In fact, 114 of 117 students so far have earned a sheepskin, or are making timely progress to doing so.

As Caitlyn Hurley documents in her Boston Globe feature from 2013, the students were not primarily selected for running ability, though the region was. Boit and Manners headed to Western Kenya, home of the Kalenjin tribe. It is from here that Boit, and Rono, and so many of the great runners came. The presumption, born out as true, that the people of the area would be better than average directed them to search for the applicants there.

The early success of KenSAP caught the eye of Canadian Charles Field-Marsham. Field-Marsham has extensive business interests in Kenya, dating from a decade-long residence there with his Kenyan wife. His business instincts proved solid as he started what became Kenya's large stock brokerage, Kestrel Capital. He imported Komatsu equipment, helping to revolutionize the industrial sector, and then saw potential in mining. Purchasing a failed site from the government and implementing new processes, the mine is now a world-leader in the production of fluorspar. In short, Field-Marsham qualifies for the title of financial genius.

Less well known are his extensive philanthropic activities. In 2005, he began to provide assistance to the students, helping with the numerous fees involved. With the disparity of wealth between the US and Kenya, what seems annoyingly high in fees here can appear an insurmountable mountain from Eldoret. Field-Marsham extends the effort to funding two residential training sessions with the prospective scholars and a measure of support for them in the United States.

The Kenyans have a word, harambee, which means pull together. In a uniquely Kenyan way, the High Altitude Training Center and Lornah Kiplagat offered the use of the HATC for the a secure and safe environment for the program. It has since become the Kenyan home for KenSAP.

Lest I give the wrong impression, the Kenya Scholar-Athlete Program does not promote athletes. They do administer a 1500m test race as part of the qualifications. Of those tested, approximately 20 percent show the kind of promise that attract additional attention from a US university. Essentially, this is the opposite of the US system which admits less academically qualified athletes who have high athletic ability.

I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to meet and talk to both John Manners and Mike Boit when I get to Kenya to learn more about their program. I'll keep you posted.