Road Racing

The fall marathon season is almost over, with the NYC Marathon being the final major marathon of the year. This year has been an eye opening one for me, especially the past few months, where I've really studied road racing, the top races, and what makes it so special.

The road racing community is a unique one, perhaps the most unique of any sport. You can combine professional runners with one hour 5k joggers. You can run a variety of distances, in a variety of places, with a variety of people. You don't need to belong to a club, or a gym, or a team. It's the most freeing of any sport. All of this, in my mind, makes it the best sport there is.

Keep on running.

The Marathon Experience

This past weekend, I soaked in the Chicago Marathon and everything it had to offer. While I've been to many major events in our sport, a major marathon is one of the great spectacles of the sport simply because there are tens of thousands of people all taking part, meaning millions of people watching and millions passing through the expo the few days before.

Here are some observations from this weekend's race:

- While the Chicago Marathon is a prestigious marathon, it's quite clear that the Boston Marathon is by far the most prestigious in the United States. While at the expo on Friday and Saturday, I saw many more people wearing Boston Marathon gear than Chicago Marathon gear. Having to qualify to Boston gives the event an enormous advantage when it comes to marketing the event, something other running events can learn from. There is nothing wrong with having standards.

- USATF needs to promote itself better. The organization had a booth at the expo, selling USATF merchandise, but why would anyone buy gear from them if they don't even know what they are. Many months ago I had a conversation with someone from the Wasserman Media Group (who owned TrackShark and partnered with USAF), who stated that they did focus groups with Chicago residents and no one knew what USATF was or what they were about. Expos give you the opportunity to showcase your product and educate the masses. USATF needs to stop worrying about sales at these events and focus on educating people about what they can offer.

- Doug Logan was not in attendance at the Chicago Marathon. The CEO of our sport didn't make the four hour trip to observe one of the greatest events in our sport, yet he can spend a long weekend in NYC watching tennis (U.S. Open).

- The race was amazing. Any event that can put a million spectators in the streets is fascinating. While it is clear that few people knew any of the professional athletes in the field, the potential is there to educate the fans and spectators. It takes a lot of effort, but it only increases the excitement of the event. I'll post more on this soon.

- The media set-up was one of the best I've ever been a part of, if not the best. While I didn't spend more than 30 minutes in the media area, basic observations showed that the Chicago Marathon does it right. Again, more on this soon.

- The power of road racing is incredible. It brings communities together, it promotes an active way of living and it gets people excited. Spectators at marathons can have as great as experience as the people actually running the event. Few other sports can really offer that at the level a marathon can. To me, road racing, especially marathoning, compares greatly with a cross country race. Fans run all over the course cheering on their favorite runner(s), making crazy shirts, signs, taking pictures, playing music, etc. It's a spectacle. Spectacles are what make sporting events great.

A New Running Book: An Honorable Run

Matt McCue, who ran for the University of Colorado, wrote a book that provides a great read for runners of all abilities, and especially those who love the high school running realm, DI running realm and appreciate their coaches. An excerpt of the book was published today on The Huffington Post. This is a must read for any running fan.

An Honorable Run Excerpt

Bolt on ESPN

Articles Worth Reading

There are many great articles floating around the online track and field community the past few days. Here are three of my favorites:

Obama to Visit Denmark - The President will travel to Denmark to campaign for the 2016 Olympics to come to Chicago.

Is Bolt Good for the Sport? - The editor of Track and Field News questions whether Bolt is good for the sport, mostly discussing appearance fees.

A Brief Chat with Leo, Teg, Solinsky and Brannen - Runner's World sits down with the quartet of standout distance runners, as they answer some great questions.

Why I Love Minnesota

Since college, I've grown to love the state of Minnesota. I like the cool summer temperatures, I don't mind the insanely frigid winters (or at least I say I wouldn't) and I love how nice the people are. The thing I love most about Minnesota though, is the way the state embraces nature and being active.

Minnesota is a great state if you're a runner. Between the Twin Cities and Duluth, there are numerous road races worth running, the high school distance running scene is strong, and the University of Minnesota always has strong cross country and track and field teams.

What impresses me most about the Minnesota running community is that it's actually a running community, especially in and around the Twin Cities. USATF Minnesota does a great job assembling circuits, whether they be road racing, cross country or track. In Illinois, where I live, the USATF association doesn't do much of anything for anyone over the age of 18. However, in Minnesota, their USATF association embraces the running community, helping it flourish.

I've been critical of USATF dozens of times on this blog, I've offered dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas on how the organization as a whole can improve. The thing is, I don't dislike USATF, in fact I really like what they do and could potentially do, especially at the state level. While some associations like USATF Illinois do a poor job, others like USATF Minnesota do a wonderful job, helping the sport take a bigger step in the right direction. USATF needs to fully embrace the association-system they've created and help build up each state into something as powerful as what USATF Minnesota is.

Amateur v. Professional

Can road racing be a professional sport? This is a question I asked myself today as I filled out a short ballot for the Sports Travel Awards. You see, the Rock n' Roll race series was put in the category of amateur sporting events, while I looked at the professional sporting events category and couldn't find a single road, cross country or track and field competition.

This got me thinking, our sport needs to do something dramatic to distinguish itself as a professional sport. All three levels of our sport (roads, cross country, T&F) need to do something truly creative to prove to the sporting public that it isn't merely an activity, but an actual sport. Yes, a road race might be amateur in nature, considering 40,000+ people can run in a single marathon, but there is a professional aspect to that as well.

What can be done to distinguish the professional from the amateur?

The Newspaper Question

On Sunday, in Chicago, the Chicago Half Marathon took place, with some top end Midwest talent running exceptionally well. Being a distance running fan, I knew this race was taking place, and looked for the results in the afternoon. However, this morning, when I wanted to learn more about the race and how it unfolded, there wasn't a shred of coverage anywhere. Not a single newspaper covered the race, other than writing a paragraph or two about how many competitors they were and what the overall winning time was.

The Chicago Half Marathon has thousands of people take part, making it the third or fourth largest race in the city, which means it's one of the larger races in the United States. Generally events that have 10,000+ active participants get media coverage, but not distance running, not at the same level other events receive.

With the rapid increase of races over the past few years (spreading coverage thin), as well as the sharp decline in newspaper budgets (less reporters able to cover events), coverage of top local races are seemingly invisible from the sporting public eye. It seems to me that races need to do more to distinguish themselves, as well as offer support to newspapers and other media outlets, if they hope to build more visibility for their event.

The newspaper question, that of getting more media attention, is one our sport is struggling with. Road racing is at an all time high in participatory numbers, and American distance running on the professional level is starting to see rapid signs of improvement, so what will it take to get the media interested? That's the million dollar question.

The Need for Numbers

When I was a freshman in high school, I nearly quit track and field. I remember going for a five mile tempo run, in the freezing cold of early March, getting dropped by a ton of my teammates and swearing and crying that I was going to hand in my uniform the next day. While I brought my uniform to school the next day, truly content to hand it in, I couldn't muster up quitting the team. That afternoon, I went out and had one of the best runs I can ever remember.

I still wasn't sure distance running was the sport for me until later that spring, when my coach gave me a booklet full of stats, top 50 lists from the state meet. I took it home, looked it over, and immediately started memorizing the names, times, where they went to school, if any of them were still in high school. It was awesome.

You see, numbers drive distance running. A marathon isn't just a marathon, it's 26.2 miles, where hitting certainly mile times is important, and odds are you keep track of the mileage you run each week, look at the top pro's performances and occasionally use a GPS watch just like me. Numbers matter, they keep up focused and we feel like we gain an edge in our own running or in our knowledge for the sport when we have a new set to look at.

Last night I read a great article on how tennis is trying to catch up to the major sports (football, basketball, baseball) in terms of using statistics to help athletes perform better, keeping diehard fans happy and attracting new fans. Thinking it over, distance running as a whole should try and make the same stats push. Often times, all our sport has are numbers.

Read the article, think about how it applies to distance running. What stats could our sport use? What can our sport do to raise it's competitive game in the numbers world?

Money and Distance Running

Reading through a variety of articles this morning, I came across two fascinating pieces that tell a lot about our sport. The first was a piece on Kenenisa Bekele, the world's greatest distance runner, breaking down how much he made this year from competition. Bekele, who races fairly often during the track season, earned just over $1.1 million this year. The second article was a good insiders view to life as a good, but not superstar, American distance runner in Brett Gotcher, who won $8,000 for winning the U.S. 20k Road Championships this past weekend.

Bekele's article didn't surprise me, except for the fact that over half of his $1.1 million came from appearance fees, which to me is simply ridiculous. It will forever boggle my mind that athletes get paid simply to show up at a meet that they should be competing in anyways. The fact that Bekele gets somewhere around four to five times more just for showing up rather than his winning performance makes me sick, and shows EXACTLY why our sport will never, ever be as big as it could be.

Gotcher's article was a little more insightful, noting that the $8k he won is basically as much as he makes working a job in Flagstaff, which is his only source of income at the moment. To me, this shows the lack of exposure for our athletes, and just how little money is out there in road racing. Road racing is the most lucrative part of our sport, and yet Gotcher only gets $8k for winning a national championship? It's sad, and I hope something can be done to change this.

Reading about athlete's income and earnings is intriguing. It sheds more light on the reason why these athletes run. They want to make money, make their careers in this sport. A lot of people romanticize distance running, but at the end of the day the best in the U.S. and the best in the world all want the same thing...to make enough money to live the lifestyle they desire.

Organizing the Wild Wild West of Distance Running

The Wild Wild West of distance running is road racing. While USATF and RRCA organize the sport of road racing to a degree (mostly by verifying courses or providing insurance, which doesn't really organize), road racing is one of the most unorganized sports in the entire world. Thousands of races are put on each year with no centralized body overseeing everything, giving races credibility or trying to simply improve their standards.

Maybe road racing doesn't need to be fully sanctioned, but it couldn't hurt to somehow organize the best 300-400 races in the U.S. and offer an opportunity for the races to grow even more in participants, as well as grow in how well they are run. However, how do you organize a sport that is simply out of control. Well...you start with the people that control the races themselves, also known as race directors.

Yesterday, while out on a run, I came to the realization that there should be a strong, centralized race directors association. I know there are a few race director organizations out there, but nothing that is sweeping nationally. To have a centralized body helping road races become bigger and better could be a great way in getting the sport to take that next step, taming road racing just a bit so the general public can understand it more so than they currently do.

Fantasy Track with the Pros

It's fantasy football time across the U.S., with millions of people having their annual drafts. While I've never taken part in fantasy football, I have taken part in fantasy track and field when it's offered by USATF (the predictions contest). The fantasy sports realm is a growing one, that keeps becoming more profitable year after year.

One area where I think our sport would thrive is in the fantasy realm. There are plenty of opportunities to have fantasy leagues, whether they be for cross country, track and field or road racing. The potential there is huge. But lets take it one step further...

If fantasy track and field/cross country/road racing really took off, I think a great way to promote the sport would be to have the top professional athletes take part as well, making their selections public so everyone could follow them and comment on their choices.

While they certainly couldn't be part of a paying league, USATF could assemble this and have a Pro Fantasy League. It'd be fun to follow, that's for sure. Plus, it would promote our sport a bit more, as the stars would be saying who they like to watch and who they think are the best in the sport. It's time for our sport to get aboard this crazy train of fantasy sports.