Chapter 22 Running Life - 21 Running Magazine

21 Spread the word runner's self-admiration magazine The magazine sometimes reads as if it had been published by someone who was too tired to concentrate on what he was doing.The magazine was contradictory and repetitive, its quality and style varied, and it published humorous articles that would make Mad readers suspicious. (question: "What is the most important circumstance that motivates a runner to run a marathon for the first time?" Answer: "He has never run a marathon.") If its entire editorial staff were locked in its tiny newsroom Inside, there's still plenty of room for all of them to do their pre-workout moves on the floor.

The unimaginable magazine is a monthly magazine called Runner's World, and while it's only a little over a decade old and with all its flaws, it's become the best and most well-crafted magazine ever devised. Influential running publication.In fact, anyone who cares about running reads it and studies it as if it were the singular Rosetta Tablet (an ancient Egyptian tablet discovered in 1799 on the outskirts of Rosetta, at the mouth of the Nile, with Egyptian hieroglyphs engraved on it). Wen and other three languages ​​- Ze Note), and then put it together with the "National Geographic Magazine" and other similar precious publications.It is inconceivable that this magazine will be circulated repeatedly.Many runners are lifelong subscribers.

I remember my first encounter with Runner's World.A few months after I started running, a friend lent me a stack of back issues of Runner's World magazine.It was then a small, unobtrusive black-and-white edition with about the same appeal as a newspaper's classifieds section. (Today, the cover always comes in four colors, though there still aren't many color editions in the back pages of the magazine.) But I picked it up and read it, and I felt like I'd found something a runner had long dreamed of.It features articles on how to exercise, what to eat, how to race, how to lose weight—everything a beginner runner needs to know.I greedily read through the stack of magazines in one sitting.

All magazines like to think of themselves as occupying an important place in the lives of their readers, but Runner's World certainly does.Every part of it is as important as running shoes and winter running gloves.The rationale can be summed up in one motto: Runner's World knows what runners want, and it delivers. The editor of the magazine was Joe Henderson, a short, shaggy-haired, smiling man of thirty-five or six, and now we hear Henderson say: "What we do is promote The notion that if you do it yourself, it not only makes sense, but it's actually more important than what some people do in the Olympics. We'd rather see 10,000 people run a seven-minute mile on a track, I don’t want to see 10,000 people sitting in the stands watching a guy run a mile in three minutes and fifty seconds.”

Henderson's insight wouldn't surprise anyone today, when parks and trails are full of runners, but just a decade ago it was revolutionary.Americans have long worshiped the winner and despised the second.To Henderson, this seemed silly.What matters is not winning, but that one is actually running.Not long ago he wrote: "The difficulty of running is not trying to do what no one else has done, but insisting on doing what anyone can do and most will never do." Henderson's office is in Mountain View, Calif., in a beige plain concrete building between Highway 101 and the sands of San Francisco Bay.Just off the road were a few linoleum-covered cottages and a big dilapidated Victorian house with peeling paint and boarded up windows.It hardly looks like a residential area.When I was there, Henderson lived in a room with a pile of running shoes against the wall—Tigers, Adidas, Puma, Nike, and others. (At the time he was preparing to publish an annual special issue on running shoes.) Next to it were two or three tubes of glue, which was applied to the soles of running shoes to make them durable.The manufacturer sent them to Henderson, hoping to promote them.But the poor guy apparently didn't notice that everyone now uses a small appliance that emits hot glue.

Henderson was five foot six and weighed one hundred and thirty pounds.Despite his sleek gold-rimmed glasses, there is something about him that suggests he lived in a simpler time than ours.He has an innocent sense of integrity that suggests he might sneak off to Bible class at night. (He didn't. If he did sneak out, it was to attend a meeting of a group called the Tax Reducers Athletic Club, which happened at least once during my visit.) Henderson takes running very seriously, It took a lot of time, getting up at first light in the morning to write in his diary, and at the end of the day thinking and writing on the subject.But he also found it ridiculous, and felt there was some irony in what he was doing.He said to me despondently, "All my troubles come from running. Then I use running to get out of trouble and get rid of trouble."

Henderson admits that Runner's World isn't perfect."We don't have time to plan ahead, we do one issue at a time. We have very few editorial staff. But we do our best with what we have," he said. In the case of a heavy workload, there is no problem for him to publish this journal seriously.I read two or three manuscripts edited by him.These manuscripts were edited carefully and skillfully. All unnecessary words and sentences were deleted with dark black pencils, and new words and sentences were neatly written with pencils. " Henderson has a strong interest in the relationship between running and writing.He said: "There is a strange connection between running and writing. Kenny Moore - who is quite possibly the best writer on running - once wrote that you have to write about long-distance running because long-distance running sometimes makes It's hard, and it's such a profound experience, both physically and psychologically. The other way around, -- and this is my opinion, not Kenny's -- is that people write articles that might make what might not have been a much bigger experience. Things that have meaning have meaning. Maybe that's why most runners keep some form of journal and they're trying to stick with it. People start out just running. But sooner or later they start analyzing their runs .”

A few years ago, Henderson himself began keeping a simple diary—how many miles he ran, how fast he ran, and so on.His habit gradually changed, and he found himself recording his thoughts while running. Now the diaries are neatly stored in numerous binders and occupy an entire shelf in his study.Much of the diary has been incorporated into such books as: "Long Slow Run: The Right Way to Exercise"; "Long Run Can Solve Problems"; , Running, Race". Henderson's book has been a boon to thousands of runners.A few years ago, after he discovered that his legs didn't work when he ran fast—he had run a 4:22 mile in high school—

He began to discuss the benefits of jogging.As a result, he rarely ran faster than an eight-minute mile today. Although, for the sake of absolute precision, it must also be noted that he likes to do short sprints at near-top speed occasionally—"just to pull my legs apart"—and on a recent Sunday morning he ran a half-mile won the second place with a time of two minutes and sixteen seconds.It's really not slow.But Henderson was also the most eloquent advocate of LSD (long-distance jogging), and he even got credit for coining the acronym, though he was modest.He said to me, "If you try to run like a college long-distance runner, especially as you get older, you're going to get into all kinds of trouble. You're going to destroy yourself." .But run like I do, and you can run for the rest of your life."

That appears to be the case.Every Saturday at 8 a.m., Henderson drives to Foothill College, a small, futuristic junior college in Los Altos, to meet a group of like-minded runners.They were all sorts of people—young to middle-aged, men and women—but they were all drawn to Henderson's long-distance joggers.One morning I went for a run with them, and they jogged up a dark, bare hillside just west of Foothill College, then jogged down the rugged mountain road, past a grove of towering eucalypts, and then Up, up, up, all the way beyond Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory, here, you can have a panoramic view of San Francisco and its 360-degree radius.Only once or twice on the way up the hill did Henderson step up slightly.He stretched his steps, otherwise, he took easy steps.We followed him feebly like old cows pulling a broken cart, our running shoes rattling rhythmically on the humpbacked California peaks.At one point, someone suggested, "How about speeding it up, Henderson?" Henderson just smiled, maintained his pace, and easily covered the mile in exactly four hundred and eighty seconds. .We went on like this for two hours until we came down the last dark, bare hill and were back in our car at Foothill College.No one seemed the slightest bit tired.Henderson has been doing this for years, and apparently counts on doing so until he is ninety years old.

By early 1977, Runner's World had a circulation of 65,000 copies.It covers the subject of running in such depth that when a New York author wanted to write a book on running a year or two ago, she simply ordered a large number of old issues of the magazine and sent The relevant part can be rewritten. Runner's World draws on running's most authoritative minds for one thing or another: Running doctor George Sheehan, physiology researcher David, Costil, and such knowledgeable writers as Dr. Hal, Higdon, and Dr. Joan Ulyot.Higden set a 10,000-meter national record with a time of 32:37.8 in his first race after the age of 40.Uryot knew more about women's running and its science than anyone else of this generation.Henderson can also write moving essays.Reporting on the nationalist sentiment that led to the most unpleasant scenes at the 1976 Olympic Games, he wrote: "Individual athletes are disgraced in sport, just as individual soldiers are disgraced in war. In modern sports , as in modern warfare, it is the leaders of the nations who are fighting and the athletes are their pawns. It is the nation that wins or loses. There are no winners or losers in individual athletes in these kinds of games - only survivors and victims." Runner's World is as much a news publication as it is a runner's bulletin.It published letters from readers, had a department for short submissions (for a flat fee of twenty dollars each), and tried to find a place for all kinds of theories, hypotheses, and ideas to be published.Its readers, who also contribute a fair amount of good-natured jokes to it, love that if you wait long enough, you can find support for almost any theory you need. The volatility of Runner's World is part of its charm.Says one reader: "If they tell you one month you have to always work out hard, you wait. Next month they'll tell you you have to always work out easy." Henderson agrees : "Runner's World" seems to be a treasure trove, but he does not defend it."I don't think we've written anything that would have made it into any sports anthology that year," he said. "But on the other hand, I think our news in general has been of great benefit to a lot of people." Those messages did exactly that, and Henderson had a lot to do with the far-reaching impact they had.He's one of those lucky ones who seems destined to do the work they're doing from the start.He grew up in the small village of Keyin, Iowa, where his father was a farmer.He left home to practice track at a middle school, and because he was good at it, he decided to become a coach.After graduation, he was admitted to Drake University, and to make ends meet, he took a summer job mopping floors and proofs for a publication called The Athletic News in Los Altos, California.This brief foray into journalism gave Henderson a new idea of ​​his career choice.He switched from an athletics major to a journalism major and worked for the university's daily newspaper, eventually finding a career writing concise sports stories for the Des Moines Register.He hates the job."I don't want to be a sports reporter, I want to be a running reporter," he said. In 1967, Henderson returned to The Athletic News.It's not a great job, but at least he's doing something he loves.Then, one day in 1969, he got a letter from a Kansas distributor named Bob Anderson.Anderson was twenty-two years old, and for four years he had been single-handedly publishing a small magazine called The Running News.Now he wants to expand it and is looking for an editor.Would Henderson be interested?He told Anderson: "Of course I'm interested. But I don't want to leave California. I have two or three girlfriends here." Anderson said, "Fine, maybe I should go there. I've been thinking about getting out of Kansas anyway." So Anderson went to California, looked around, and liked it all.So he went home and loaded all his belongings on a U-trailer truck and headed west.He paid Henderson seventy-five dollars a week, as much as he himself was paid. (Henderson said: "I don't count how much he pays me. I don't need to spend anything. I live in a cabin on the hill and drive a '63 Volkswagen.") Like Henderson, Anderson doesn't actually cost much, so until then he didn't have to earn a lot.Now with a full-time employee, it's time to grow the business.He wanted to get more readers and tried publishing books.Anderson, with serene dark brown eyes and a mustache, has a rather confident demeanor, and he always does what he says.His already firm main principle is that if you see something needs to be done, you don't waste a year trying to figure out what's in the way; you just do it.It was with this energy that he started the "Long Distance Running News" magazine.As early as when he was studying in middle school, he became interested in marathon running.He couldn't find a book in the local library on how to train for a twenty-six-mile race, so he wrote to some famous marathon runners and asked them how to train.Anderson told me: "They almost all answered my letters, so I thought to myself; with so many acquaintances, why not have a magazine?" I published the first issue in January 1966 for a hundred dollars Phase one. I published two issues that year, one thousand copies each.A total of five hundred and thirteen dollars was sold.Soon I was doing four issues a year, then six.By the time Henderson started working here, our circulation had grown to two thousand copies. " Anderson took a few economics classes at Kansas State University, but magazines kept getting in the way.He said: "I spend so much time in magazines—as much time as I do running a business—that I don't have time to learn the theoretical stuff." What he wants most is to make "The Runner" world"-- The name was changed in 1970 - and it became the best running magazine anywhere. Of course, he did exactly that.The main reason is probably that he, as a publisher, has a strong instinct to adopt unorthodox ideas.While a typical publisher is primarily concerned with financial matters, Anderson has been very careful about what Runner's World should carry from the start."My view is a bit different from most publishers, mostly because I'm a runner before I can be a publisher," he said. "I've been running since 1962, and I've run eight marathons. I run "Runner's World" is because I want to get the running news that no one has provided. I read every word that was published, and now I still make the final decision on controversial articles." Anderson Many of the magazine's very important writers were attracted to the ranks.It was he who, many years before women's running became as common as it is now, saw what was bound to happen and started publishing articles about female marathon runners. What sets Anderson apart most, though, is his professed disdain for money.He said to me: "Of course, I need enough money so that I can do what I want to do. But money is not the first, running is the first. I think that if I do a good job , and the money will come.” One weekend a few years ago, Anderson quietly considered how he could grow his company, World Press.One after another, he sketched out thirty-two titles for sports magazines—covering everything from weightlifting to sledding.In the end, he deleted these titles to seven, and according to his personality, he simply started these magazines.They are Waterworld, Self-Defense World, Gymnastics World, Football World, Cycling World, Nordic World, and Downstream (without the word World).“Back then, no one knew much about the long-term effects of running,” Anderson said. “If the medical director of public health came out and said running was bad for you, we needed something to fall back on. So we started with the Cycling World, followed by other magazines." At the end of 1976, when he concluded that the first three magazines were not attracting sufficient advertising and subscriber renewal, he abandoned them without regret.However, several other magazines are still selling well. Less than a decade ago, World Press had only two employees, and now it has about eighty, with an annual income of nearly three million dollars. Anderson's book business flourished, too.When he started the business in 1970, most of his published books were pamphlets of a hundred pages or less.But before long, he began publishing entire books.The company now publishes about fifteen books a year, six or seven of which are about running and the rest about other sports.Most books sell well. Dr. Sheen on Running is one of the most popular books, selling 35,000 copies in its first year and a half, a respectable number even by premier publishing standards. For a magazine like Runner's World, the main problem is getting people to know about it.It wasn't the kind of publication that usually sells well on newsstands, and it didn't have a very suitable mailing list, so Anderson relied mostly on word of mouth.He also relied on a new invention he called recreational running games.Often announced in the local papers, this recreational running event is now held in about seventy-five cities throughout the United States; kind of sports meeting.The unique advantages of recreational running games: no numbers, no fees, no registration, no long waits for results after the games-factors that make most races seem messy. All one sees at a recreational running event are a lot of people in shorts, one holding a starting gun, another calling the time at the finish line, his voice loud enough to drown out the gasping, and the inevitable setting A table piled high with various books from Runner's World and World Press.Naturally, the first recreational running event was held in California, not far from the editorial offices of Runner's World. Recreation running events are now held from Walla Walla, Washington, all the way to Inverness, Florida, and Anderson even has a special kit to send to those who want to hold their own recreational running events (see Appendix A ). It's clear that Runner's World isn't just entertainment, it's a real business, with the same anxieties and concerns as any business anywhere.But it is also subject to eccentric, elusive intrusions from a carefree world.At lunch one day, Henderson went for a half-hour run with a colleague named Eric Evans, a former Olympian and editor of Down the Stream.They changed at the office and ran toward the San Francisco Bay, talking about the problems their magazine was having as they ran briskly.They are both working and playing.Suddenly a brown jackrabbit the size of a house cat popped out of the grass and onto the dirt road ahead of them.Henderson ran after him, his arms swinging like a sprinter, his feet kicking up clouds of dust.Until the jackrabbit fled into the grass.When he reunited with Evans, he said with a smile, "If we're in an open field. I can catch it. Jackrabbits are fast, but not long."