• On Wednesday, I visited Apple HQ, where I tried their new running-focused Apple Watch, and I think I really like it. I’ll let you know once I run with it on my own.

• On World Book Day (Thursday), Artwords, a beautiful independent bookshop dedicated their window display to my book, which was incredible. My friend Ben Gibson, who photographed both my wedding and Elton John at The White House, took some photos of the evening.

  

• Friday had the double whammy of hosting a panel with Tracksmith on the future of running media (it is safe) AND a bonus surprise drinks and dinner with Lee Glandorf and friends.

• Today, I saw both the women’s and men’s marathon world records fall from the London Marathon finish line grandstand. It was incredible.

Watching Tigst Assefa cruising down The Mall with those long, relaxed strides, on her way to breaking her own world record was cool, but by the time Sabastian Sawe rolled through, minutes later, we were already expecting a world record time. The pace was mind-boggling, but we were 11 months ahead of schedule for a sub-two-hour marathon!

Flick to p.218 of my book, This is Running, and you’ll see the passage about how Dr Simon Angus of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia ran a model that predicted we would see a runner break the sub-two-hour marathon barrier by March 2027.

How did Sawe do it? A new super shoe from Adidas? Sure. A meticulously-tailored fueling regimen constructed by Maurten? Definitely. Add in beautiful weather and a helpful tailwind, and we got the moment.

Having been waiting for this to happen for almost a decade, it was incredibly cool to see the milestone achieved in-person. What’s better is that, knowing about Dr. Angus’ model, there is certainly more to come, and soon. Sawe’s confidence was well-placed.

Especially because it was a tested and certified CLEAN run. I hate that we always have to think about whether the athlete has been doping, so the rigorous, voluntary testing that Sawe went through in the lead-up to this race was brilliant for shutting down the idle conjecture.

Let’s look forward to Chicago and Berlin — two notoriously fast races.

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Buy This is Running

In the three weeks since my book’s release, it’s been sitting in around the Top 50 books on Amazon that are about running. That is objectively insane to me. Bookshops positioning my book next to decades-old classics is insane to me.

Thanks for buying This is Running, or reviewing it (five stars across the boards!), or if you’re about to help me become a bestseller. Here are some purchase links.

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones
REVIEW - Goodreads | Amazon reviews really help xo

Adidas won the race

Both record breakers and Yomif Kejelcha, who also ran sub-2hr in his first competitive marathon, were wearing the new $500 superdupershoe from Adidas. Will Adidas fully own the narrative in a moment where Nike, who started the sub-2hr arms race, is licking its self-inflicted wounds? Let’s see.

Marathon Commerce Culture

I haven’t been caught up in the hubbub of the London Marathon for a few years, but it was last year that caused a million think pieces on running culture (like this one). According to Simon Freeman of Like the Wind magazine, 2026 is even bigger and more brand-focused.

There’s always a lot to be said about glossy, corporate ‘pop-ups’ at major marathon events, but what I saw in Boston, constructed by my friends from Substack, that was the real deal.

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How to make the denim chafe worth it

One of the reasons that I started this newsletter was that I wanted to write about running but none of the major outlets wanted me to write about running for them. LA Times? No reply. Runner’s World? Same. I knew I had a very solid résumé, but I didn’t want the pain of having to pitch my (admittedly slightly leftfield) views to an editor who would umm and ahh and eventually pass, wasting all the time. So here we are.

When Runner’s World put out a call for a runner culture expert writer, I dropped them a line offering my services, and told them I just wrote a book on the topic. Maybe they’d review it, I half-joked, expectantly.

I pitched a few stories that I thought would pop and we settled on this on denim. With Truett Hanes as the headline, he’s a divisive enough figure for the Instagram post to truly pop with comments from dozens of people who won’t read the article. My nightmare.

The big thing I love about the Running Sucks community is that you’re calm, measured, and not that many of you are even on Instagram, let alone trying to score points over giant publications from behind your tiny screens. It’s a different world, and I like this one a lot more.

The Rise of Denim - Runner's World

As you can imagine in an article from me, it’s a bit fun, but there’s also a big community focus. Give it a read. Maybe I’ll write more for them.

Can I be convinced to like running?

I’m still waiting for a single review of my book from legacy media, but I’ve luckily got the support of top writers like , who ask questions like the above. I’ve been a big fan of Mikala’s work in Body Type. It’s the kind of non-judgmental writing on exercise that I can fully get behind.

Go read our bit, and see what you think.

Body Type

Can I be convinced to like running?

First: I am locked in a nail-biter of a race to be a finalist in the Buff Chick fitness brand’s new spokesmodel search. Each day I wake up and am either in first or second place. My nerves are in tatters, my competitive drive is aflame. I am doing things like making…

Read more

5 days ago · 25 likes · 4 comments · Mikala Jamison

Time to finally go home to LA after 12 days away, and write up a conversation with comedian Dan LaMorte, which I will post on Thursday. I’m writing this to keep myself accountable! I’m looking forward to not being around tens of thousands of (admittedly awesome) people for a while.

Thanks for reading,
Raz x

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So what’s been happening since last time?

• A few other people started complaining about the Nike ad campaign that I complained about last Monday.

• I spent the weekend at the Boston Marathon with the coolest (but also friendliest) people in the world.

• I flew straight from Boston to London for my book launch in Dalston this evening with the author of the Harry Styles x Haruki Murakami article, plus two other events.

Like I said: not much time to write. I know you’re here because you like longer form messages, but it’s easy to update via Instagram so follow there if you wish. Like this photo, for instance:

RUNNERS TOLERATED

Overall, this particular ad just felt like a ham-fisted ‘how do you do, fellow kids’ attempt to get in with runners. It failed.

Every marketing planner/strategist on LinkedIn has given their tuppence on what Nike’s polemic campaign has taught them about B2B sales, but here are my quick rebuttals and points of view.

• Nike’s share price is down 65% in the last five years. My hot take is that Nike is the challenger brand in running now.

• They’re throwing money at the trail space a few years after everyone else did.

• They’re rumored to be re-launching their pioneering running fashion category, Gyakusou… a few years after everyone else did.

• They tried (and failed) to write a Tracksmith-style ad campaign because that’s a brand they’ve lost ground to over the past decade.

In 2026, Nike might just be a challenger brand bankrolled by past glories.

Read more

On Wednesday, almost 60 people (!) came down to Vroman’s in Pasadena to watch the show with my friends Ezra and Jinghuan. We did some readings, they asked me some questions, I signed some books. And I did it all over again in SF on Friday evening at Running Wylder, with some incredible questions from the audience.

Get your copy of This is Running

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

Signed copies can be found in Vroman’s, Running Wylder, and Skylight. Here are a couple of photos. More can be found on my Instagram.

1. If you have bought my book, thank you, thank you, thank you SO much. When there are so many other things to spend your money on, it means a lot.

2. Reviews are really tough to come by, so if you would be so kind as to go to Amazon or Goodreads and give my book a rating, that would be awesome.

IT’S BOSTON WEEK

I’ll be in Boston this weekend. My book will be available at The Rec Room, which is a running fashion pop-up at 334 Newbury Street that’s curated by , , and . I will be there signing copies, and generally hanging out, so come and say hi!

I’ll also be making an appearance at the Tracksmith Clubhouse on Friday evening, and there will be a couple of (hopefully signed) copies available at the mighty Trident Bookshop, but if you simply want to meet up to enjoy the Boston breeze or invite me to a hott party, please drop me a line.

email me

IT’S ALMOST LONDON WEEK

From Boston, I’ll be flying straight to London for three very special events. I can’t wait.

Thu 23rd April - 6.30pm at Artwords Bookshop, Clarence Rd E5

I’ll be in conversation with Sophie Heawood, my lovely friend who recently wrote the marvelous Harry Styles / Haruki Murakami feature for Runner’s World - RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Fri 24th April - 3pm at Knees Up, Hackney Rd E2

I’m hosting a panel with Tracksmith titled Reimagining the Future of Running Media, featuring Simon Freeman from Like the Wind, Ashley Mateo of Runher, Ben Hobson of Runner’s World, Grace Cook of Salty, and Carmichael Caldwell - RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Sat 25th April - 11am at Progress Club House - The Dray Walk Gallery, Brick Lane E1

As part of Progress Running Club’s London Marathon pop-up, Simon Freeman (again) will be interviewing me and Howie Goldklang, author of Salt & Flickers and founder of Silver Lake Track Club. I love hanging out with LA friends on home soil.

C is for Charity

A few weeks ago, the London Marathon was rumored to have two editions over one weekend. Some of you might already know that’s something I predicted in my book, but as the biggest single day of raising money for charity, my immediate thought was that it’s going to raise a whole lot more money.

About a month ago there was some dullard on Threads complaining about people getting to run Boston Marathon because they were raising money for charity. Here’s my hot take, that I first blurted out on Mario Fraioli’s Morning Shakeout podcast:

Anyone not actively competing in the elite field anyway. You’re only running for a participation medal, so you might as well do something good for the world.

How about 2% of your annual income? Seems fair, doesn’t it? And if you get tired of asking people to sponsor you for a different marathon every other month, maybe you’re running too many. Give someone else a turn. There. I solved the major marathon ballot crisis as well…

I was interviewed by Josh Rosenthal of Borderlands and he asked me about my favorite artifact. The photo of me in my school athletics singlet is from the first 5k that I ran as an adult, where I raised $1,000. For a 5k. It wasn’t about the race itself as much as it was about doing something good for the community.

If you have a corporate job, here’s a tip to make the most of it: ask your colleagues. The CEO of the company I was working for put in half of that. That’s how to redistribute the wealth in my opinion.

My friend Alex just ran the Brighton Marathon. Very windy, apparently, but he raised £1000 for Alzheimer’s charity in aid of his mother-in-law. How cool is that? He outlines that he funded the race entirely by himself so 100% of all donations go to charity. That’s the way to do it.

Decentering yourself from the process, giving yourself an external ‘why’ can even help you dig deeper in the difficult moments during a race. Consider that bit of potential benefit to your race, if helping others isn’t enough.

Paris is for tree huggers

Talking of thinking about someone other than yourself, the Paris Marathon banned single-use materials. Another friend, Chris ran the race and told me about how every runner was given a reusable plastic cup and there were huge efforts to ensure there were water stations every 2.5 km (1.5 miles). He told me how it was such a non-event; that the Paris Marathon had normalized this kind of behavior.

Brighton Marathon had an army of ploggers literally sweeping the back of the route, picking up an estimated 22,000 gel wrappers. Slowly but surely, sustainability initiatives are making their way into larger races. These are things for all other races to try and emulate. And maybe something for the fueling companies to consider as well.

Beyond Running by Aire Libre with Mau Diaz

“It’s a conversation about obsession, craft, and the strange beauty of a thing millions of people do every day without ever quite being able to explain why.”

Culture Study Q&A

Anne Helen Petersen, who was kind enough to write a blurb for my book, featured me in a Culture Study Q&A last week. As ever, Anne’s questions were top dollar, and the comments didn’t disappoint either.

Go and read it here on Patreon.

What on earth is Nike doing?

Putting this billboard, with that messaging at a free and incredibly inclusive community wellness initiative??

Read more

It’s the chapter that I’ve asked Katie Douglas to discuss with me tomorrow, at the San Francisco launch party that’s she’s throwing for me at her wonderful store, Running Wylder. I think her shop is the blueprint for the modern running store. Come join us at 6pm Friday 4/10.

Join me at Running Wylder on Fri 4/10

Interestingly, my publisher didn’t initially want to include that eighth chapter, but I insisted. I personally couldn’t write a book about running culture and not include half the running world, plus I knew that I’d been doing the work on understanding the experience of others since day one of Running Sucks.

The next installment of that work is today in this profile of Allie Gibbons, an American ultrarunner who completed 300 miles across the treacherous Atacama Desert in Chile as part of the harshest iteration of The Speed Project last November. She ran it solo. While 22 weeks pregnant.

We talk about that huge undertaking, and the dramatic final 40 miles, as well as the response from both others and from Allie’s body. For me, it’s a pertinent story in terms of the hot topic right now around how brands monetize pregnant women.

Read more

Please buy a copy of This is Running

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

Here are some other things to do (to build an economic ecosystem that reflects your/our values):

1. If you want to support your local independent bookstore, please do. Stop by and talk to them about stocking the book. You’ll at least hopefully have a nice chat with someone in your community.

2. I would also love it if your local library offered This is Running. If that sounds cool (it is cool), simply put in a request on their website. Three (3!) people have already requested it from the New York Public Library!!

3. If you already own the book (thank you, I love you) please, please take a couple of minutes to write a review or give it a rating from wherever you bought it. It really, really helps. I’m currently at a 5* on Goodreads…

Californian book tour this week

This week, I have three very fun book launch events in LA and SF and… in the liminal space between. I say fun because I’m trying to do something different with excellent people at every event, mainly so I don’t lose my mind saying and doing the same things over and over again. Please join if you’re nearby!

• Tue 4/7 - 11am Substack LIVE with (JOIN US?!)

• Wed 4/8 - 7pm @ Vroman’s, Pasadena - a ROAST of running (submit your Qs)

• Fri 4/10 - 6pm @ Running Wylder, SF - Katie Douglas will read some of my book out loud, and ask why I — a man — am writing about women - RESERVE YOUR SPOT

I am loving getting out and about doing things. It’s somewhat counterintuitive, considering how much I love either running or sitting at my desk and writing, but I got into this to meet amazing people, and that’s happening every time.

Last weekend, for instance, I was in New York to lead a gravel run with Salomon from Brooklyn Running Co. We ran to and through Prospect Park and got a little lost, before returning to the store to talk about how running can fuel creativity.

After we wrapped up in Brooklyn, I headed into the city to see the first finishers of the OSR30 – an unsanctioned, unmapped 30-mile race around the perimeter of Manhattan organized by the Orchard Street Runners.

I headed to Orchard & Broome for noon and found the street was blocked off with a TV showing the leaders racing set up in the middle of the road! It was rough, but incredibly ready, and absolutely thrilling to experience.

For and by the community, I found myself among the kind of people who are energized by engaging with running at the grassroots level. I was surrounded by running nerds, and so I met some of the coolest people around, including . Read their excellent and comprehensive race recap.

This is all to say that my goal of writing about Allie Gibbons running 300 miles while pregnant didn’t quite happen last week.

London Calling

I’m in London for London Marathon week and I’ve already got three really cool events lined up. Maybe one more to come, let’s see.

Thu 23rd April - 6.30pm at Artwords Bookshop, Clarence Rd E5

I’ll be in conversation with Sophie Heawood, my old friend who recently wrote the marvelous Harry Styles / Haruki Murakami feature for Runner’s World - RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Fri 24th April - 3pm at Knees Up, Hackney Rd E2

I’m hosting a panel with Tracksmith titled Reimagining the Future of Running Media, featuring Simon Freeman from Like the Wind, Ashley Mateo of Runher, Ben Hobson of Runner’s World, Grace Cook of Salty, and Carmichael Caldwell - RESERVE YOUR SPOT

Sat 25th April - 11am at House of Progress, Commercial St E1

As part of Progress Running Club’s London Marathon pop-up, Simon Freeman will be interviewing me and Howie Goldklang, author of Salt & Flickers and founder of Silver Lake Track Club. A nice little bit of LA x London.

Last week, I was also announced on a festival lineup poster on IG. This never happened while I worked in the music world, so eternal thanks to Love Trails Festival for making me understand what it must feel like to be one of the bands I used to interview. See you in Wales in July for FOUR separate events!

I’ve also been blessed by a lot of coverage from a lot of awesome people.

Some new podcast appearances

• Can you believe I’m on Conner Mantz’s undercard on the Marathon Talk podcast, presented by the Abbot Marathon Majors? Well… I am. Martin Yelling is a legend, and I almost answered all his questions correctly - LISTEN HERE (I’m at 31 mins).

• On L.A. Marathon weekend, I got to sit down with in person (!) and talk about Los Angeles, my own running, and a bit about my book. What a legend - LISTEN HERE.

• There’s a whole chapter about shoes in This is Running, so I was really pleased to chat with shoe guru on his Sneaker History podcast - LISTEN HERE.

• Last but definitely not least, I had my second in-depth chat with for Running Tales. I wonder if he’s listened to the new Harry Styles album yet… - LISTEN HERE.

Elsewhere on Substack

• was unreasonably nice about me in his Tangents newsletter - READ IT.

• It was really cool talking about my process with for 3Qs in WIRE - READ IT.

• I, a dad, am very pleased to be included by in her New Mom Run Club - READ IT.

• The inimitable interviewed me for the Sweat Lookbook, and it’s as good as you would expect from someone I trusted to give me notes on my book - READ IT.

Like I said, it’s been a busy week.

G is for Guilt

During my chat with Lee, I described the fabric of running culture as being woven from everyone’s individual threads. Lee quickly related that to religion, and how my perspective is “Unitarian Universalist in its worldview, where religion/running is about developing your own relationship with god/the sport.”

As ever, Lee was able to boil my philosophy down to its purest essence. I have always espoused thinking more deeply about running, and about ourselves. I believe that to be the path to personal enrichment and enlightenment.

One of the ways that people engage with running is through guilt. First, I do want to distinguish between guilt and shame.

Read more

It wasn’t the first running challenge that Jonty had embarked upon, though. Having only started running in 2020 during the UK’s Covid lockdowns after being tagged in a challenge, he soon thought, “I might as well do it every day.” That kind of thinking led to Jonty becoming the first type 1 diabetic to run across the UK just 18 months later in 2021.

Learning to fuel as a diabetic ultrarunner

But, yeah, he’s got diabetes. He was diagnosed over 20 years ago, as a tween. In this new age of running, where we have the science to meticulously calculate and maintain our energy expenditure and sodium levels, so we know the exact number of gels to chug down, how do you work wildly unpredictable sugar and insulin levels into life as an extreme endurance athlete?

“Running with type 1 diabetes… there isn’t a book for it. There’ll be a cure before there’s a book.”

“When I was first diagnosed, my nurse told me to just go out and learn. There isn’t an insulin to carb ratio for everybody – it’s completely individual, because your insulin sensitivity will change throughout your life. It’s all about just getting out and trying, so trial and error is the only way.”

Read more

Not in Los Angeles? NO PROBLEM. Wherever you are in the USA, you can purchase a personalized copy of This is Running.

Skylight Books – the neighborhood bookstore that I spent hours and hours and hours in when I first moved to Los Angeles – has set up a special pre-order page.

I will write whatever you like in the book! AND I will put some Running Sucks stickers in the book as a nice bonus.

Purchase This is Running from Skylight

As an author who desperately wants to support independent bookstores and running stores, this is very cool and important. It takes a lot of time and some effort to organize these things, so your purchases are very much appreciated.

UK news is coming very soon, and (trust me) it’s fun. But first! More about Los Angeles, because I live here.

WE’RE ROASTING RUNNING

My excellent friends, Ezra Weisz and Jinghuan Liu Tervalon are hosting my book launch event at Vroman’s in Pasadena on Wed Apr 8th.

There will be a reading, some descriptions, some questions, and… a ROAST OF RUNNING. Something a little different, eh? We’ll be answering the most diabolical questions that get asked.

Just like the signed books, you don’t have to be in Los Angeles to participate in the Roast. If you want to enter some tricky questions about running (or about me, the book, or my two hosts), you can submit them in this form.

Add your Qs for The Roast

If you are in LA, though, please come down to Vroman’s and be a part of what will definitely be a very fun evening.

Vroman's book launch - 4/8

A look inside This is Running

I know that I’ve been banging on about my book in this newsletter for six months now, but allow me to share a little more. Here are a few of my favorite pages. It’s just 10 days until publication in the UK, and 15 in N. America. Time flies!

1. The contents page. One of the recurring pieces of feedback has been that this book is “comprehensive” but “not overwhelming.” That combo speaks to my soul. Plus it’s got Courtney Dauwalter being a UTMB legend as snapped by David Miller.

2. This is a photo of someone running the Altadena To Palisades 50k race in 2025 all on her own. I love this race. This movie theater is my favorite in LA. Perfect photo by Connor Simpson.

3. I’ve listed The Speed Project as one of the ten most iconic races of the 21st century. Long-time readers know how much I’ve written about TSP, and there’s also a Q&A with TSP founder Nils Arena in This is Running.

4. A banger photo of some bloke dressed head-to-toe in Soar Running garb. I hope they hook me up with some animal print gear <nudge nudge>.

5. Another David Miller photograph of Jasmin Paris collapsed at the end of her historic efforts at the Barkley Marathons. What a photo.

6. There are a few of these pullquotes dotted throughout the book. The best one, however, is in the introduction.

Purchase links

USA - Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble | Amazon US
UK - Bookshop UK | Waterstones | Amazon UK

Last week on Running Sucks

It’s TSP season, and so I wrote about Tilly GW, who has been busy driving gender parity on the starting line of The Speed Project. Over 50% of those running from Los Angeles to Las Vegas on their own were women or non-binary. That’s enough of an achievement to wonder out loud why the bigger races aren’t pushing for the same level of equity.

Another great (imho) TSP story from 2025 coming this Thursday.

New York, New York

I cannot get enough of New York. I don’t want to live there, because I am now the embodiment of a soft Southern Californian when it comes to icy weather, but I really do like to visit, so I am. This weekend!

8.30am Sat 28 Mar
Brooklyn Running Co
480 Bergen St, NYC
Reserve your spot on Forte

Please come and try the new Aero Glide 4 GRVL shoes, and listen to me complaining about how cold I am. It’s been over 90 in LA, ok??

Talking of hot, hot heat, I had my first stop on the Salomon Gravel tour last Wednesday when I headed down to San Diego. Milestone Running is an incredible store, and I am really pleased that Greg is ordering some copies of This is Running. I will be back down there to sign some copies ASAP.

I will (hopefully) also be in both Boston and London for the marathons, so if you want to hang out and take photos with me, drop me a line and help make my attendance a 100% possibility.

Thanks for reading,
Raz

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The status quo in question right here is representation on the start line of races. I’ve written about this topic a number of times now (I’ll link to a few of the articles at the end), but there’s still so far to go. One of my favorite headlines, however, was when The Speed Project – maybe the most emblematic event of the past decade in the running world – introduced their Radical Equity Program.

They took the most extreme category of the 340-mile journey from Los Angeles to Las Vegas – the solo mission – and made it their goal for the field to be at least 50% women and non-binary runners.

I’ve followed the REP as they invite women-only teams to run TSP, but the content is primarily digital, in the form of Instagram posts and accounts, or YouTube documentaries. It’s inherently temporary and transient. In this era of streaming subscriptions, we don’t ever truly own digital documentation, so I find it so interesting when there’s any aspect of permanence. When athlete and artist Tilly GW quietly announced a ‘zine about the couple dozen people involved in the 2025 race, I had to know more.

Tilly has been spearheading the REP. Growing up in Cambridge, I speak to Tilly while she’s in Chile, following the Atacama edition of The Speed Project, which was created in a moment where the increasing commercialization of the LA-LV event was weighing on founder Nils Arend’s mind.

Read more

I’m going to go into a bit more depth about what’s in the book over the next few newsletters, but in the meantime, get your orders in.

Get your copy of This is Running

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones
Canada - Amazon CA | Indigo

And if you have any questions about the book — any at all — fire away, and I’ll answer them all, either below in a comment or in the coming weeks.

Leave a comment

Running & Creativity

For those who read right down to the end of last Monday’s newsletter, you will know that I had a US spring tour to announce with Salomon.

They sent the massively talented Brian Galdamez and Kevin Cruz to my house to capture my creative process, which is exactly the topic that I’ll be speaking about at these in-person events. I’ll be outlining the deep relationship between running and creativity. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll know it’s something I’ve been exploring.

You can watch the video clip on my IG here. I’ll be posting more updates about the book tour, book release, and all the regular stuff on there, so follow along if you aren’t already.

Watch me on IG

Come see me on the Off Track Gravel Tour if you can. And if you do, don’t be shy – come say hi. It’ll be lovely to chat.

March

• 3.18 San Diego, CA - Milestone Running REGISTER

• 3.28 Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Running Company REGISTER

May

• 5.12 Twin Cities, MN - TC Running Company REGISTER

• 5.16 Portland, OR - Fleet Feet PDX REGISTER

• 5.20 San Francisco, CA - Fleet Feet Menlo Pk REGISTER

• 5.25 Columbus, OH - Fleet Feet Columbus REGISTER

• 5.30 Denver, CO - Runners Roost Lakewood REGISTER

I’m very much looking forward to visiting Minnesota and Ohio for the first time, which will be US states 17 and 18 for me. Maybe I’ll hit 20 states visited by the end of 2026. That would be nice.

On another very personal note, I’ve written about the lack of representation of South Asian faces in the running world for the past three years, so actually being platformed to be that visible face (especially in the trail world) is very, very cool to me, and hopefully to many others.

If you work at a brand and you want to figure out a way of working with me, either on the newsletter or IRL, you can always drop me a line raz@runningsucks101.com.

Email me

O is for Offline

A trend that I’ve been noticing more and more frequently is a desire from the terminally online to be online… less.

Maybe it’s related to what’s going on in the world at the moment, and wanting less exposure to it, or maybe it’s because it’s not even been 19 years since smartphones have existed in the wild. Such a huge, swingeing change in our media consumption habits is difficult to get used to, especially if it’s bad for us. Millennials – my generation – were the canaries down the coalmine.

We increasingly understand that short-form content is bad for us, and younger generations thankfully learnt from us to never post a 100-photo album on Facebook. But now, the doomscrolling of clip after reel is addictive by design, and it’s ruining our attention spans by relentlessly dosing us up with dopamine hit after hit.

The negative results on our mental health is astounding. Anxiety, depression, poor sleep, FOMO and loneliness, we’re less engaged in human relationships because we’re watching other people on our phones.

Read more

It’s perfect marathon weather in Los Angeles while I write this newsletter. It’s a sunny and clear morning settled in at 58°F/14°C. Yesterday hit 86°F/30°C, which is not even nice for walking the dog in.

The LA Marathon decided to give people an out at Mile 18, and it caused a stir online, didn’t it. Someone taking a medal after a massive run in diabolical heat doesn’t affect you. Neither does someone raising hundreds of dollars for charity, but that’s another matter.

Unless you’re trying to win the race, all the medals are participation trophies. They only mean something to you. It’s an incredibly special thing to be able to run 26.2 miles, but not to me. I know literally thousands of people who have completed marathons. To me, it’s normal.

It’s all about context, you see, so just let people do what’s best for them on the day. Focus on celebrating your own achievements, and you might be happier.

That photo finish

Nathan Martin, the high school coach and “Fastest US Born African American Marathoner” won the race in 2:11:18. It was a photo finish, beating Kenyan athlete, Michael Kimani Kimau by 0.18 sec.

The bit of the story that wasn’t immediately apparent happened just before the home straight, when Kimau was led off-course by the lead motorcycle for a brief moment. He was flanked by two civilians cheering on the course. It wasn’t great.

Clearer signage at a point where the course splits into two would’ve helped. Getting those fools off the course would’ve helped. It not being 75°F/25°C also would’ve helped his brain not be so fried.

It’ll be sad if the full story takes away from Nathan’s incredible 400m sprint finish, but if not for LAM’s logistical SNAFU, it’s very unlikely that his efforts would have resulted in the win.

“It feels like a Major.”

Los Angeles has always been the perfect place for all the brands to descend upon. We love buying stuff in this city because so little of the big stuff came from here. You can argue with me about this in the comments, but all the big brands come from Europe or NE or NW USA, and New York dictates the narrative on running culture, even if some elite athletes were born and/or trained in LA.

I wish the LA Marathon would focus on how difficult the race is rather than Oscars, Pop Tarts, and St. Patrick’s Day. With its hills, the course is more physically demanding than either New York or Boston, and the reason the early cutoff was at 18 miles was because that’s a moment on the course where runners see the finish line and then have to run another 8 miles. How demoralizing? In a race that relies on mental fortitude, even the strongest don’t survive.

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About LA running culture, though

Last year, it took an out-of-towner in the shape of Oakland running store, Renegade Running to host panels and art exhibitions, and generally bring the city’s runners together. Otherwise, LA’s run clubs are reflective of LA’s reputation of being a collection of disparate and separate neighborhoods that you can travel between, but rarely mix.

This year, however, hometown heroes Koreatown Run Club celebrated their 10th anniversary in style with a weekend-long party. There was an unsanctioned race, panels, a cafe/store/wellness pop-up space where I was able to host a gathering of important run crew leaders as we discussed keeping our communities and ourselves safe and healthy.

And that’s the crux of it: in the truest spirit of Bridging The Gap, KRC’s Basecamp brought people together from all around the world. Nobody but KRC could’ve hosted that, and I hope they do it every year from now on.

G is for Gravel

You know that I espouse all running: road running, trail running and all running in-between. That’s it. I’m a runner. But gravel running is having a moment. The world is telling you to add another shoe to your rotation, but what is gravel running, and do you really need another shoe?

Gravel is for the runner who likes to get out into something more tree-lined than the city streets in which they live. It’s another arrow (running shoe) in the quiver (closet) for the runner that runs on some roads, but also on dirt paths and less technical trails. It’s versatile but specific. There isn’t a Gravel option on Strava, so it’s less about your mile time and measuring your vert. It’s more about getting that run in from home, from the office – running and exploring. You can still have self-imposed rules, but the parameters are blurred. To me, that sounds a lot like freedom.

When I lived in London’s suburbs, I didn’t join the run clubs that ran almost exclusively on city streets and through the parks. They ran at night, you see, when I was at rock shows and bars five nights a week. Back then, the nightclub was still my nightclub. Instead, my regular route took me from my front door along a mile of cement and asphalt until I got to my local river. There, the towpath was a mixture of mud, puddles, and occasionally some actual gravel.

I would have loved gravel running shoes for those near-daily river runs. Instead, I always made sure I chose a pair of running shoes with a grippy outsole. Options were limited back then.

Those runs, away from my laptop, are where I first learned to use running to untangle my thoughts. I’d grown up by that river, but running along it? I was learning how to navigate that terrain at speed. I was learning how my body felt under the purposeful duress of running. I was learning how best to use that hour of silence in between the heavy metal and hardcore records I listened to for work.

Those runs were where I did my best writing work. They still are.

Now, when I’m not running the streets near my house in car-centric Los Angeles, I often drive to Griffith Park and run through the dells and up compacted dirt ‘trails,’ which are as many as they are glorious. Slick, flat soles are no good on this terrain either, so I still look for shoes with a little more grip without anything expressly being called a lug.

With all that said, I think that gravel can more easily be swept into the periphery of the rapid expansion of trail running. The calming green expanse of nature is the goal, right? To surround yourself with the stuff that gets the creative juices flowing. The desire for creativity and discovery is maybe the purest human essence.

That’s where gravel thrives. It’s just running. Take a break and go have some fun with it.

What do you think about gravel running? Do you have space in your house for another pair of shoes in your rotation? Does a gravel shoe replace two pairs in your rotation? Do you understand what gravel running even is??

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Running Sucks LIVE

The newsletter eats first, so I’ll tell you about two new live dates:

• Wed 18 Mar - Milestone Running, San Diego

• Sat 28 Mar - Brooklyn Running Co, NYC

These are the only two preview readings of This is Running and I’ll also be leading gravel runs with shoe demos of Salomon’s new Aero Glide 4 GRVL.

If you’re in San Diego or NYC, please come down! Full details of the rest of the tour will be on my IG in the next couple of days and then in the newsletter next Monday and beyond.

• Wed 08 Apr - Launch party at Vroman’s, Pasadena - FREE TICKETS

My book, This is Running is release on 2nd April in the UK and April 7th in the US. Please pre-order it if you haven’t yet!

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones
Canada - Amazon CA | Indigo

Thanks for reading
Raz x

FOLLOW ME - Instagram | Strava

You can read more about the book here, but expect a deep dive into the chapters over the next couple of weeks.

Every brand and their dog is here organizing pre-race shakeouts, sponsored by one under-regulated supplement or another. There are so many events that Marathon Weekend has seen fit to compile them into one schedule to peruse. The first non-Major that they’ve made a schedule for.

Brands aside, you’ve also got events like the one I’m putting on, where I’m bringing together community leaders in the fight against ICE. It’s part of the Koreatown Run Club 10th anniversary celebrations, where they’re hosting a big Bridge The Gap weekend-long event. I’ll be hosting a panel with the OG run crew leaders.

The event, which I titled Running in the Shadows: LA Run Crews vs ICE will have speakers from Santa Ana and Sacramento, Pasadena and Silver Lake, and more. They’re leaders that I’ve seen working hard to keep their communities safe, and I want them all to come together to share their learnings and get to know one other. That’s it.

Attend in LA: Run Crews vs ICE

It’s a heavy topic, with only positive outcomes.

ONE MONTH UNTIL MY BOOK IS RELEASED!!

That’s right. This is Running is unleashed onto British bookshelves and coffee tables on 2nd April. My North American compatriots have to wait another 5 days until April 7th.

If you haven’t pre-ordered my book yet, now is a fantastic time to do that. Here are some helpful links for you to click.

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones
Canada - Amazon CA | Indigo

If you’re in another country, click here for links to local booksellers around the planet.

On 8th April I’ll be quizzed about This is Running by my friends and Ezra Weisz at SoCal’s oldest independent bookstore, Vroman’s in Pasadena. Come along and give Jinghuan and Ezra some fuel. I’ll get the drinks in after.

This is Running launch at Vroman's 4/8

More events to come. Hopefully I’ll be in your city, and we can meet IRL.

My first running byline is in Like the Wind magazine

I started this newsletter in March 2023 partly because I could not be bothered pitching my work to over-worked editors any more. I wanted to write, but pitching to running mags with zero work about running in my portfolio… I knew it would be like pulling teeth, so I just didn’t.

I was writing for me, and for whoever subscribed to Running Sucks, and I liked that. I still like that. There are almost 5,000 of you now reading my work every week, and I’ve made some marvelous friends over the last three years through this endeavor.

One of those friends is Simon Freeman, the co-founder of Like the Wind magazine. He and I have very, very similar outlooks on life. That’s why he created such a beautiful magazine. If I wasn’t in the process of moving from London to LA at the time the magazine was launched, I can’t help but wonder if our bond wouldn’t be even stronger, and maybe more formal.

I’m really happy to say that my first formally-published piece of writing is in Like the Wind no.48. Go grab a copy of LtW, and read about my perspective on researching and writing This is Running.

P is for Post-Race Blues

You just ran a race – let’s talk about it in terms of a marathon because of this weekend – and you’re feeling pretty bummed out. What gives?

Biologically speaking, your immune system is suppressed for up to three days after running a marathon. This means you are more likely to get sick after a big race! Talk about a downer. You might start to curse yourself for putting yourself among so many of the great unwashed, but it’s a natural thing to get ill after a serious endurance effort. Cut yourself some slack.

You’ve also burned up a lot of fats during the race, and not all of them are from the obvious places that we think about. A study from 2025 talks about burning myelin fats from your brain. These fats are crucial conductors, so when these fats that make up 40% of the brain are used up (albeit temporarily), your brain starts to function less efficiently. You’ll lose motor coordination and be less capable of regulating emotions and your senses. This can leave you feeling somewhat discombobulated.

In terms of how you’re feeling, it’s somewhat more complicated than simply replacing fats, and allowing your immune system to restore itself. The inescapable feelings of ‘what’s next?’ take a little longer to ratify in your mind.

You’ve just spent months working towards a singular goal of completing a marathon. You likely would’ve had a goal time/pace in mind. Whether you achieve that goal or not, you will be left somewhat rudderless after a race.

One of the reasons I stopped racing is that I really disliked that feeling. I really love running, but adding a goal or a race into my training left me feeling deflated. After a race, I would stop running. In my 20s, I sometimes went months without going for a run. Unthinkable now!

Over time, I came to understand the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The idea of running for the joy of the activity rather than the achievement of a goal. It’s framed as external or internal factors, telic or atelic. For me, it’s about the pursuit of happiness.

Now? I just run. Can I run fast? Sure. Can I run long? Sure. Does it matter? Not if I’m running 15 miles with my friends. We’re just chatting for 2hrs. That’s the goal. Not if I’m running a mile with my son on a Saturday morning. Oh boy, does he like to chat.

So, if you find yourself struggling with the post-race blues after one of these massive achievements – and please don’t be fooled into thinking that any race isn’t an achievement – think deeply about the work that you put in. Think about those months of planning, the early mornings, the moments where you thought about getting a taxi home on a long run. Recognize all the new skills you learned and the new outlook you have on life. It’s worth so much more than a medal.

Maybe a new goal will help fill the void, but take a beat before you sign up for another marathon, ok? It’s a huge undertaking of training. Slow down and allow both your body and mind to rest and recuperate. You’ve got time to think about whether there’s another way of running that you might love even more.

Thanks for reading
Raz x

FOLLOW ME - Instagram | Strava

And don’t forget to buy my book:

I specifically traveled to New York for the marathon at the end of last year to immerse myself in the hubbub. I wasn’t running the race, so I wanted to dunk my shoulders under the surface of the icy pool of marketing activations as hard and fast as possible. I bumped into people on the street who I live continents away from. I ate pizza that was inexplicably connected to carbon-plated shoes. I braved the sideways rain to attend a panel. Then, the day before race day, I took a very necessary day off.

In the midst of the branded events, I noticed On partnering with a new local bathhouse, Lore Bathing Club, and the Four Seasons Hotel launching an ‘infrared recovery experience’ for marathon runners. Maybe the events are just reflecting the state of wellness culture at large, but it felt to me that as the chatter bubbles up toward the lip of the pan, the need for stillness also increases.

Rabbit was another brand that I noticed showing up a little differently in New York. They had a presence at the classy Walker Hotel, centrally located in Tribeca, and their events seemed calmer and more assured than most. It was less about screaming for attention, and more about creating something of worth. When I saw that Rabbit was curating a Clubhouse series for 2026 in Chamonix for UTMB and then for the Chicago and NYC marathons, my interest piqued.

A collaboration with Halo (“A hotel booking platform for athletes, supporters and fans”), the Clubhouses are described as, “a curated race-week hospitality experience designed to support runners from arrival to race to celebrations.” It’s another example of how opportunity is driving running culture into new directions.

Rabbit founder Monica DeVreese expands on this telling me it’s about, “how you’re greeted, how you gather, how you feel nourished. Hopefully – this sounds cliche — it’s like your home away from home, where you feel really comfortable, and you feel like you’re able to take care of yourself in a way that falls in line a little more with your everyday life.”

“I think these [global running] events can be very chaotic, and so it’s more about hosting and welcoming [runners] into this space, just so they can feel like they’re slowing down a little bit.”

The promise is of “premium hotel stays, race-week prep and shakeouts,” along with a gift bag containing limited products, community programming, and post-race recovery.

The central location from the NYC hotel is mirrored in Chamonix, where the Hotel Le Faucigny is a four-minute walk from the finish line, with Chicago’s Arlo hotel a mile from the end of that race. It’s the kind of situation that solves many of my personal issues with running a big city marathon. For me, the distance itself has never been a problem, but after spending months or years training to run a marathon, it’s irritating for the final moments to be difficult. Ignoring all the adjacent events in order to focus on rest is one thing, but having to stay far from the race and sacrificing necessary sleep to commute into the start line is a miserable prospect.

This all fits neatly into the idea of curated marathon tours and adventure holidays. I spoke to Mau Diaz about Aire Libre experiences in 2023, for instance, with companies like Rogue Expeditions doing something similar, but Halo thinks primarily about the hotel portion of the marathon journey.

When I spoke to Monica, I positioned my understanding of the experience as ‘luxury,’ which she immediately repositioned as “hosting” and “hospitality.” Both are true, perhaps, but as someone who cobbles together the cheapest travel possible, any level of hospitality feels like luxury to me. We already know that runners are wealthier-than-average, so it makes sense for a comfortable one-stop-shop for lodging to be available.

Behind the operations side of the Clubhouses is Hilary Fenet. The founder of Halo is a New York-based runner who spends the month in Chamonix every August. It’s the perfect joint endeavor between female-founded companies.

Rabbit is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and shows every sign of growth. The thought that’s gone into building the Clubhouse series means that when Monica says that Rabbit – as a brand – sees runners as athletes but also as humans, it’s that bit more believable, and it all goes back to how the company was founded.

A runner since the age of 13, Monica had experience working in product design for several of the big running brands. After moving to Southern California, she opened Santa Barbara Running Co with her husband, and they soon founded an elite running team in the charming beach city. Jill Deering, a “super-competitive” road runner was on that team, and the two women soon discovered that they shared a problem that they would solve together.

“I was getting really frustrated with the apparel that we could offer in our running shop. This was at the time when we could only buy product from the big footwear brands. The stuff would come in our store and go on sale. It would not sell because it was nothing exciting, the fits were awful.”

Around this time, 2015 or so, Lululemon shorts were the big athletic apparel discovery. Monica recalls how “every woman on the beach pathway was wearing it.”

“Jill was lining up at races in Lulu, and she felt the stuff was cute but didn’t feel like she was identifying herself as a runner.”

When you work hard at a sport, you build an identity, and so it’s natural to want to be kitted out in clothing that reflects your values, not the values of another sport. That identity is split even in the running world.

Are you a road runner or are you a trail runner? The chances are that you call yourself one rather than the other. Me? I run the beautiful trails of Los Angeles, but don’t have the time to run for dozens of hours. I primarily run on roads, though. Whether it’s for 30 minutes or for double figures of miles. I’m just a runner.

Rabbit’s 2026 Clubhouses can be found at the greatest trail race in the world and also at the largest road marathon around. This is how the brand shows up in the running world. While they release special capsules for each major marathon, Rabbit has also been an early supporter of trail races due to Monica having “switched gear to the trails” when she and Jill started the business. Just as Jill deeply understood what road runners needed in a pair of shorts, Monica had direct knowledge of what the trail and ultra world needed from a new apparel company.

A key moment was becoming the official apparel sponsor for the Javelina Jundred in 2018. They used their EZ tee for the official race shirt, and when runners realized that it was – for once – something they’d actually wear again, Rabbit’s reputation rose. Leading with quality led to other trail race directors getting in touch, and their presence in trail increased over and over. This year, their Trail Tour program sees Rabbit involved in 32 races in some way.

Showing up at UTMB then, is a bold statement. Especially when Rabbit has no European distribution to speak of. The goal, as with the rest of the business, is to move carefully, with purpose. With the Rabbit Clubhouse Series, they want to make sure they’re building something for their customers that truly delivers. I agree: that’s hospitality.

What race-day problem would you love to solve? What type of runner are you? Do you have a race lined up or do you run for fun? What’s your favorite bathhouse?? Tell me in a comment!

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Further reading & related articles

• The Rabbit Clubhouse Series

• Rabbit on Instagram

• Santa Barbara Running Co

Housekeeping

This is Running - purchase links for my book

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

BUY ME A COFFEE - Think of it as a tip jar for my writing.

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We’re two weeks out from the LA Marathon, and I’m very pleased to announce the event that I’ve put together over the last few weeks. Yeah, that’s the name of it.

LAM is not one of the Majors, and doesn’t have the same number of cultural events surrounding the race as Boston, New York or London, but Los Angeles is the kind of destination that means that people fly in from around the world to run LAM.

Last year, I noticed more non-running events and more of those shakeout runs than in previous years. Los Angeles Marathon was gaining a foothold in the international marathon marketing calendar. I wanted to contribute to the LA Marathon’s running culture, but I wanted to do it in my way.

Last November, the L.A. Dodgers clinched the World Series in game seven. It was fucking cool. I really enjoy baseball, and the Dodgers are my local sports team. The problem is that ICE have been allowed to park their vehicles in the Dodgers parking lot, and that is the opposite of cool. While the team gave this city everything, the organization behind the athletes were happy to spit in our faces.

For the past 18 months, when I’ve been running alone (90% of my runs) I’ve been carrying some form of identification with me. Yes, because of ICE. It’s nothing new for me exactly. 9/11 took place when I was 18, the week that I went to university. For my whole adult life, because of my Bangladeshi heritage, I’ve been subject to a greater level of scrutiny and humiliation by American agents whenever I’ve traveled.

What ICE is doing in the USA right now is even more sinister than anything TSA was created to do, of course, but it’s the same Dept of Homeland Security agents of chaos at work. This time, however, they’re also dangerously ill-trained. This all means that I have to carry my papers with me. Even then, I know it won’t be enough to be bundled off the street into an unmarked van.

For the LA Marathon, with the fear constantly hanging over us, I thought I’d get some real heads together the day before, on Saturday, 07 March in Koreatown, and have a little chat about what we can do in the current political climate, and what we can do together.

Run Crews vs ICE - LA, 07 March 2026

It’s a moment to share what some of us have already been doing in our communities, but also to look around a room and feel safety in numbers. Everyone in that room will be fighting on the correct side of history, and that is important. I believe this is how we build community.

It’s a heavy topic, but it’ll have many positive outcomes.

You are what you eat (N is for Nutrition)

Last Thursday, I published a piece about how runners engage with their diet. I think Zoe Rom is marvelous – incredible experience as both a runner and as a journalist – so it was a real pleasure to get her insights on this topic. Give it a read, if you haven’t yet had a chance.

Personally, I don’t even carry water for runs under 45 minutes. If I’m doing a leisurely 10k, I might carry a water bottle, but I don’t think about nutrition or electrolytes until I’m into 10-mile territory. If it’s too hot, I usually just don’t run.

For my first half-marathon, back in 2017, I pretty much rawdogged it by 2026 standards. I carried a standard 500ml water bottle, and for nutrition, I had two (2) Reed’s ginger chewy candies. I also had two tiny paper cups of Gatorade from the aid stations. That’s it.

Honestly, I felt fine afterwards. I rewarded myself with a veggie pizza from Lucifer’s in Los Feliz (yes, I had the whole thing to myself, and it was far too much pizza), but my recovery was unremarkably swift.

Over the past few years of running with people who have been super dialled-in with their in-run nutrition and electrolytes, and talk so confidently about the power of these fully unregulated supplements on these long group runs, I decided to try them.

For those longer runs, I have found that electrolytes have been ok for stopping my head getting a bit cloudy (did I used to call dehydration my runner’s high? possibly…), and the nutrition – especially a post-run protein shake – has been great for recovery. Nothing much to evangelize though. Maybe if I was caught up in trying to hit a BQ time or something like that, but that’s not how running fits into my life.

I saw everyone talking about their favorite flavor of energy gels, and which brand doesn’t make them shit themselves mid-run, so I have avoided that. I can’t handle chugging down those gels, anyway. Disgusting texture. I’ve ‘enjoyed’ the Maurten solids but they just feel like expensive rice crispy bars, even if they definitely have a lot of science and technology involved in their packaging..

Running ain’t cheap if you’re trying to increase your distance, for whatever reason. When your running shoes might cost 50 cents per mile, and you’re getting through another $5-10 of nutrition and hydration on a long run, this lovely hobby can get up towards $20 for a long run. It’s worth it, it’s worth it. Especially when you don’t conk out at mile 20 of your big race.

Elsewhere on Substack

I’ve been waiting for Olympic medalist @ Molly Seidel to post on Substack since Nov 2024 and she’s finally done it. Unfiltered opinions on her gear through the lens of an intensely thoughtful person. Why wouldn’t you?

how 2b a runner

Cotton is the original performance fabric, and other black canyon takeaways

One week out from my first ultramarathon, and I can still confidently say that shit was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. 62 miles is no joke, and my hip flexors remind me every day that while I may have the heart of a trail runner I very much have the muscle development of a marathoner. Hopefully four months of training will get this pavement queen a b…

Read more

2 months ago · 20 likes · 5 comments · molly

This is Running updates

There is some big news coming next Monday on tour dates. There will be at least one reading before the release of This is Running. Maybe I’ll see you somewhere. Maybe I’ll have some extra goodies, maybe not. Waiting on the publisher for that… maybe forever.

This is Running - purchase links

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

I had the pleasure of speaking with of the Half Marathoner and of Wings & Spikes. Go give them a read if you want a little more insight in the creation of this book.

Housekeeping

BUY ME A COFFEE - Think of it as a tip jar for my writing.

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I write about running culture. That’s so not up for debate that it often feels like I’m breaking the fourth wall. What can be scrutinized is what we consider the most important aspects of running culture. I wrote about some broad opinions and definitions of what I think Running Culture is last year, but the whole point is that it’s different for everyone.

What I find interesting is how so many Instagram repost accounts and podcasts talk about running culture only in terms of fashion. Can you tell it’s become something of a bugbear of mine? Because when I think of culture, it takes a while to think of clothes.

When you’re immersing yourself in new cultures, wearing clothes appropriate to the locale is the easiest way to fit in, that’s for sure. You can also visually and immediately communicate a lot about what you want people to know about you through what you’re wearing – a heavy metal band t-shirt, for instance – but, in the same way, clothes are also the most superficial. It’s the feature most likely to elicit the famous phrase of, “My culture is not your prom dress.” The line between cosplay and culture is a fine one.

For runners, it’s often said that the only thing you need to get out of the door is a good pair of running shoes (and a good sports bra), but one thing is truly non-negotiable in my opinion: the food you eat. When it came to writing about runners’ diets and food culture, I immediately thought of ultrarunner and journalist Zoë Rom.

There’s Zoë’s whip-smart podcast Your Diet Sucks, where she cuts through diet culture and nutrition myths using science and humor alongside registered dietician Kylee Van Horn. Zoë also features in my book. In the section where I recommend the running books that I’ve enjoyed most. As someone who’s tried to incorporate sustainability into every aspect of my life, Zoë’s 2023 book with Tina Muir, Becoming a Sustainable Runner spoke to me in many ways.

But let’s go back a couple of paras and think about going on a world tour, and thinking about all the different cultures we come across on our travels. What am I doing at each stop? I’m trying to find the hole-in-the-wall food spots and the architecture that speaks to the history of the place – both old and new history. In a world where most people are wearing the same Levi’s jeans in every city, it’s the food and the built environment that tells me the real stories and it tells me them quickly.

In terms of runners, food culture is a mesmerizingly intricate phenomenon. We’re not talking about sharing a gebeta in Ethiopia or sitting down with an exquisite bowl of spaghetti in Rome. This is food as fuel, and ideally food that won’t make us shit ourselves on the 16-miler we’ve got planned. That’s what I talked to Zoë about.

Optimization culture

“Community is not an optimizable thing. It’s a deeply human experience that you can’t quantify, you can’t take it in pill form or in a powder.”

“I think that community and connection resist optimization and a lot of runners and people interested in fitness are trying to over optimize a lot of things, and I think, particularly, food. Look at the proliferation of greens powders, which are going to be redundant for any halfway decent diet. If you’re eating food that includes plants, you don’t need that. It’s gonna be an extremely expensive urine additive.”

I know people who don’t actively enjoy eating food. They are the ones who will chug a flavorless protein smoothie for lunch. For those people, a nutrition pill would be a welcome addition to the menu. And it’s not an incorrect way to think about food. We do essentially eat food to survive, so why not think about the food we’re consuming in terms of our running?

Amateurs vs Elites

“Another thing about food that I think sometimes makes it especially sticky for runners is we are a group that maybe self-selects to be pretty achievement-oriented.”

“It’s true that you might need to have a heightened awareness of your nutrition needs for supporting the training, but I think it’s fine for culture to not always be evidence-based. I don’t think the human experience can or should be quantified into covering your macros or following nutrition guidelines to the letter. That’s just not what humans are on earth to do 100% of the time.”

“I think that with athletes and runners, it can get really easy to take some helpful framework to make sure you’re meeting your baseline needs and get overly attached to them, such that they start to dictate your life and that becomes the culture.”

In this brave new world of Boston Qualification, every marginal gain counts, and it’s something to be wary of obsessing over. You have to ask yourself whether the juice is worth the squeeze. The gels, for me, are certainly not. Precision in-race fueling it may be, but I’m running for fun, and sucking down a sachet of goo is anything but fun.

Zoë and I talk about how outsiders might view us as “maniacs who weigh everything to the gram,” and how Matt Fitzgerald’s book, Diet Cults highlights a study that shows how it’s amateur athletes who are more likely to be overly prescriptive with their diets. The elite athletes, with a better understanding of how to fuel their bodies, were less pedantic. That’s easily related to the beginner endurance runner’s strict adherence to Zone 2 compared to an elite runner just thinking about their runs in terms of ‘easy’ or ‘hard.’

Unhealthy relationships

“I think that there are several cultures. One of the loudest is optimization culture of food as fuel, food as a biological necessity, but not necessarily as a human culture, and getting boiled down to its lowest denominator. I think there can be a time and place for understanding things in that way, but I also would say it is anti-scientific to view food and nutrition in a vacuum because that’s not how humans encounter it. We’re all bringing our cultural upbringing, we’re all bringing a lot of baggage, good and bad, to every food experience we have.”

“There are many other factors besides food and exercise that determine how your body shows up in the world. However, food and exercise feel really controllable, and so people looking for control, like endurance athletes, a lot of times will try to place that control on food.”

Zoë goes on to talk about calorie-counting and unhealthy obsessions with and aversions to food. She says that over 60% of endurance athletes might be in that category. She talks about concerns over weight and health. It’s a tough thing to talk about, and I have little first-hand experience to add to the conversation, which is why I have specifically not written about this topic before. I’ve even removed answers from interviewees talking about how they run specifically so they can eat more. That’s not a healthy relationship with either food or running, but it’s an easy one to form.

Zoë’s favorite thing about food culture in running

“In the same way that folks connect with group runs and a profound social experience, that can really only come from those really human connections of going on a five-mile jog with someone, joining them in a post-race meal or a pre-race carb load. There’s a reason sports teams eat food together. It is a modality of connecting with people that you’ve already had this vulnerable, connective experience with in sport.”

“I think it is that connective potential, and as someone also in eating disorder recovery for about a decade, the sort of healing that you can only get from being around other people who are also having a positive, fulfilling, emotional, connected experience with food. When you’re able to feel it and enjoy it, there’s just nothing else like it.”

“My sort of plea with runners would be to hold things a little more lightly and have moderation in everything. Runners are maybe not a people that are extremely chill at moderation in either way.”

If, while reading this article, you’ve thought something flippant, like, “Why not just try to be more normal about what you eat,” consider that runners are very often trying to be anything but normal. We’re trying to improve ourselves with every step. We’re trying to build a bolder routine for ourselves. We’re trying to change our body so it’s faster, or maybe thinner. We’re trying to learn different and ‘better’ ways of doing all of that, even if it’s actually worse. But we’re trying and we’re exploring.

It’s all hard work that we’re doing, but it does mean that our normal is very different from other people’s, which goes some way to explaining why so many runners struggle with food. We’re all just trying to find happiness through running. It’s important to remember that.

Links

• Go listen to Your Diet Sucks

• Zoe on IG

Thanks for reading
Raz x

Housekeeping

BUY ME A COFFEE - Think of it as a tip jar for my writing.

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I went for a run with my friends yesterday. I ran 3.77 miles. ‘Nothing extraordinary,’ you might think. but it was my longest run since July 2025.

Injury struck last April or May (I forget / have blocked it out), and I thought I’d given myself plenty of time to heal, but Achilles tendinitis struck, and it struck hard. It was my first serious injury in at least five years. I wrote more about that last time.

Since then the constant, nagging pain has given way to mild discomfort. I can now perform my rehab exercises every day without flare-ups, and I have been doing them. It’s allowed me to very gently add a mile a week to my runs for the past couple of weeks, so those 3.77 miles were fraught with worry. Would I be able to push past the three-mile barrier without discomfort? Well, here I am the following morning, feeling as if it was March 2025.

That run yesterday was around the filming locations for Buffy the Vampire Slayer 25 miles south of me in the City of Torrance. It was organized by the LA Cinephile Run Club who I wrote about a couple of years ago.

Towards the end of the run, there was a quarter-mile, slightly downhill segment where I did my usual of pushing the limits, of course. I thought I’d stretch my legs. Now, having read about my near-year-long injury crisis, you might be shaking your head a little, and rightly so, but I’ve been listening to my body and this felt right.

The whole run was great. Strava says it was a 10 min/mile pace, but that included stopping at four locations. I was rested. There was no pain. I wanted to test my body. I wanted to run fast.1

A few seconds into my gallop, I wanted to know if I was fast like I was before the injury or if it just felt fast. I was fast. I was probably running at 75% capacity – still holding enough back to feel safe – but was traveling 30% faster than my ideal easy pace. It felt amazing.

I adjusted my cadence to incorporate the slight downhill decline. There was no wind, but I heard the air whooshing past my ears. My joints felt as loose as they ever had. I experienced the sensation of unadulterated freedom. As I flew along the sidewalk, it felt like I could do anything. It felt like my body was finally my own again.

For a few seconds, at least. Like I said: I haven’t run over three miles in over six months, but right now I am thankful for the little bit of speed that downhill piece of pavement afforded me.

This is Running - an update on goings on

With my book being released in six weeks, I’ve had a whole extra layer of work added to my schedule, and it’s made my days slightly congested, and maybe a little overwhelming. Especially with the context of <gesticulates wildly> the state of the world.

It’s been two weeks since I last sent a newsletter out. I’m certain that you haven’t noticed, but I am still compelled to explain why. This is my little corner of self-indulgence, after all.

I’ve been arranging live events across time zones (yes, I hope to meet you in your own backyard), and I’ve been the subject of interviews. On that note, it feels strange to have the tables turned, and I am quickly understanding how all those bands that I used to interview felt when talking about the new body of work they were releasing into the world. I always wondered why they were often so listless and non-plussed when I was asking them about their new record.

I’m immensely proud of this book, and I believe that you’ll enjoy owning it (please pre-order it - links below), and finding new ways to talk about it is proving to be an enjoyable challenge.

Anyway. I can’t wait to share my plans with you. Soon! Until then…

This is Running purchase links

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

For this Thursday, I’m writing a piece about the slice of culture that you engage in wherever you go. What do you think it is?

Running Sucks Haiku of the Week

Patience: a virtue
Holding oneself back is hard.
Think of the future.

A little restraint is even more difficult after tasting the delights of a little speed. This running lark can be quite addictive, after all. I write about that in the first few paragraphs of This is Running.

If you are a paid subscriber to Matt Fitzgerald’s Endurance Mastery newsletter, you can read those paragraphs in an excerpt.

Endurance Mastery by MarathonGuide

Running Is a Radical Act

Running is a radical act. The person you are at the end of a run is different to the person that took that first step. First and foremost, taking the time to turn up for your body and mind is an act of self-care, but as you run, you learn things about yourself, the people you’re running with, and the places you’re travelling through. The unique ways in …

Read more

2 months ago · 3 likes · Endurance Mastery by MG and Raziq Rauf

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With my British friends, we talked about how much worse it could get in America, especially as we expect they’ll re-escalate in Los Angeles soon. We talked about whether we were going to stay. Whether we could afford the tens of thousands it would cost to ditch our friends in the mud. It’s much easier to say, “Just leave then,” than actually do it, of course.

Instead, I’ll focus on economic protest, I thought. My eldest had developed a rumbling cough but Target is on the Shit List, so I got a bottle of kids’ Robitussin from the pharmacy at the bottom of my street. That caused a glow of satisfaction. Shop local? I did! However, it was 40% more expensive than it would have been at the place that’s devoid of DEI. Hmph.

of Footnotes posted this fantastic piece today about how it feels to just be carrying on with our daily lives while this country is invaded by its own government, and how much worse it could get.

Dollar Voting with your Feet

Something you can do when you see those regressive forces is organize your community in a way that you’re not funding them directly.

ICE (in this current masked guise of poorly-trained/hastily-deputized vigilantes) has been ever-present in California for 12 months. It’s why I profiled Aaron Garcia of Keep Runnin’ Santa Ana a year ago. A huge race for his crew is the Surf City Half-Marathon in Huntington Beach, which brazenly declared itself a “non-sanctuary city.”

KRSA runners had already signed up for the 2025 race. They’d trained for the race. The feeling of their money directly lining those pathetic pockets was sickening. The response? Never again.

This past weekend, 160 KRSA runners ran a free race that Garcia organized at the same time as Surf City Half, taking at least $20,000 in race fees away from Huntington Beach, and that’s not including all the other expenses in the city like travel, accommodation, food, and drink.

“I believe in voting with your dollar. Where you spend your money matters. Santa Ana is 77% Latino. I wanted to provide an alternative for my team who wants to run a race and not have to support cities that don’t support us back or even want us there. I wanted everyone to feel welcome at our half time trial.” Aaron Garcia, Keep Runnin’ Santa Ana

We need more leaders leading like that.

Libraries FTW

One of my all-time favorite institutions is the library. It’s an essential public resource that the US actually gets very correct. As a child, I spent many, many weekends at Ilford Central Library. I entered the book review competitions every school holiday. They gave us book tokens as prizes for reviewing 10, 20, 30 books. I bought Roald Dahl books, which I now re-read with my eldest son, 30+ years later. It’s pretty cool.

That’s why I was overjoyed that the New York Public Library has ordered This is Running. I love it. It made me so, so happy. It fucking rules.

I would also love it if your library ordered a copy, so please go to your local library’s website, and request it. That’s all it takes! Here’s the information they might want.

Author: Raziq Rauf
Title: This is Running
Publisher: Batsford
ISBN: 1837330425

One of the other things I did last week was join the LA chapter of the Burrito League. I had a brisk walk back and forth along Sunset Blvd with my friends Gordon Clark and Adam Copeland, a founder of Tantrums, who was the main organizer of this global jaunt. The month-long escapade was based on the Strava x Chipotle challenge that is found on p.184 of my book

Please pre-order it, by the way. Some of you have. Most of you haven’t. (Yet?) You buying it from Amazon is sadly the best way of ensuring I have a long-term career as an author. The corporate tendrils of bookselling.

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

Yes, I’m running again. Long-time readers may have been following the malaise of my poor heels, but we’re back up. Very gently.

It was a strange juxtaposition to how I felt about the news, but when I run, I feel like I can do anything. Unloading the dishwasher is easy. I eat more healthily. I start planning vacations. I think about who I want to take those vacations with. The freedom that tunning affords me dictates my whole life. Anyway…

T is for tendons.

It’s a new year, but it’s an old injury. I’ve been plagued by my right Achilles tendon for months now, and it’s still causing me pain every time I restart my rehab exercises. Ugh.

The Achilles tendon acts like a spring for runners. It’s the connection between your calf muscles and the bones in your feet. It’s the crux of the corporeal slingshot that absorbs and expels 10x your body weight every time you crunch your body into the ground. As a runner, without my Achilles, I am dust.

It’s extra annoying because I was in the best shape of my life before I got injured – probably the reason I thought it would be ok to try playing soccer as a 42-year-old man (with a severe emphasis on ‘old man’).

Soft tissue injuries often come from a single event of extreme exertion, and that’s exactly what that game was. I don’t often (read: never) perform twists and sprints and other explosive movements like a last-minute shot at goal during my five-mile neighborhood run. My body is still reeling from the shock.

What that fills me with the most dread is that I know from experience how long a damaged tendon can take to heal. In my late 20s I suffered calcific tendinitis in a brachial bicep tendon. It was the kind of painful that made it difficult to turn a steering wheel, and when I asked my doctor how long it would take to be pain-free, he replied immediately with, “Nine months.”

He was correct almost to the day, which is a reminder that there are no shortcuts. That means that I will continue being patient and good. No running, and lots of plyometric strengthening exercises while I watch TV.

How can you not end up like me?

• Don’t try to play soccer, even if your DNA is wrapped up in that sport

• Warm up your calves before running with dynamic stretches

• Stretch (and strengthen) your calves thoroughly after running

• Cross-train with low-impact activities to reduce stress

• Add plyometrics to your routine to condition your tendons

• Work on your single-leg balance to strengthen your ankles

• Take more rest days!

Luckily, this isn’t my first injury rodeo. I’ve been out of action before (metatarsal stress fracture, torn hip flexor, general knee malaise, spinal inflammation), and I will return, and sooner than I think. I’ve just got to remember that.

I’ll be writing this A to Z of running throughout 2026, so if you have suggestions or requests for me to write about something, submit your ideas through this form, and I’ll add them to my list.

AtoZ of Running: submit a suggestion

Podcast appearances

I was on the podcast with , talking about how to write a book about running. You can listen to that here.

It was also lovely to chat with for the podcast. We’ve been chatting on here and off here for the past three years. Great guy, great podcast. Listen to that here.

Remember to pre-order my book. All info and direct purchase links can be found here:

Thanks for reading
Raz x

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“And I worked six days a week for the entire 12-week [race] prep.”

The work that Bobby does is at Michelin-starred restaurant Frasca Food and Wine, which you can find in the trail running haven known as Boulder, Colorado. He owns the joint.

That excellent marathon time was at The Marathon Project1 in Arizona, where Bobby grew up. For the uninitiated, this was the second edition of the closed course marathon that is designed for getting fast times. It’s a flat track with no spectators. If you’re running it, prepare to lock in and run. When he was looking for a race that was “something different,” a recommendation to run a unique race in his hometown from an employee who ran the course sub-2:10 back at the first edition of TMP in 2020 was enough.

Having run all of the Majors apart from Tokyo (that’s up next), it’s reasonable that Bobby was looking for something different. He’s been running marathons for exactly 40 years now, and the things Bobby has learned over those numerous 12-week periods of race preparation have been used in numerous other parts of his life.

Bobby talks to me about getting his runs in each morning, ahead of getting into work for a full shift. We’re chatting at the start of his work day. His assistant Jodi is buzzing around organizing and helping. She arranged this virtual meeting, and was an essential component in this past training block.

At the best of times, a marathon training schedule is a feat of calendaring, assuming there’s more to your life than running. That will involve work, family, friends, and everything else in between. Maybe, for three months, you can commit a single weekday morning each week to the long run, but when you’re a top chef in international demand, things are a little different. Bobby fitted those long runs in around corporate events as far flung as Boston, New York, and Rome.

While he loves running, Bobby also loves his work. He loves the restaurant industry. He tells me how restaurants are “there for everybody.” If you’re new to a country and don’t speak the language, or you lose your corporate job in an economic crisis, maybe you’re a single mom and need flexible hours, or you’ve made a mistake and have gone to jail, you can still have a “beautiful career in the restaurant industry.”

Bobby Stuckey is a huge advocate of protecting all of that, and showing people in the industry that it doesn’t have to be a life of burning the candle at both ends.

“What we like selling in journalism and film, Anthony Bourdain was brilliant at. He did such a good job storytelling of the pirate ship chaos.”

There is an alternative, healthier narrative that can be followed.

“I don’t want to be preachy but I ran a marathon on Saturday and I am going to work 11 hours today, and it’s not going to kill me, because I’m not going out after work getting hammered and doing shots. It’s not that I’m a prude – I enjoy a glass of wine – but I want to protect my professional life.”

It’s true that Bobby likes a glass of wine. We’d met in person just a few weeks earlier over a couple of them, bonding over good food and essential music. That he’s one of less than 300 Master Sommeliers in the world is also important, of course.

He tells me that “running a marathon should be standard operating procedure for anyone who wants to be a CEO.” When he’s mentoring his team on their way to becoming sommeliers themselves, he recommends they run a marathon. (“None of them listen.”) He says that running – and specifically planning a schedule for marathon training – has helped his executive function.

Bobby was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia in college, but his running career started when he was a kid who was “out of [his] mind.”

His family moved to Phoenix when he was seven, and his new PE teacher sent the class out to run half a mile in 100°F heat. Mr. Morris’ goal was to get the class up to running a mile, and he did. They ended up running that mile three times a week for the rest of the year, and Bobby loved it.

When the rest of his class was old enough to sign up for Little League but Bobby wasn’t, his dad, wondering where to place his son’s energy, suggested a 10k. The rest is history. He ran his first marathon in high school in December 1985.

“As someone who’s self-medicated through running, a lot of things like executive function, running really helps.”

The symptoms of executive dysfunction2 include disorganization, poor time management, forgetfulness, trouble prioritizing. The knock-on effects are feeling overwhelmed and anxious, even ashamed. These are all issues that neurodivergent individuals suffer from.

If, in 2026, we are friction-maxxing3 (a silly word that means we’re doing hard things), runners could be a couple of steps ahead of the masses. If we learn the most from character-building moments that are purposefully less easy, we learn every time we voluntarily put our bodies through the rigors of a run. There are well-known ideas such as learning resilience from doing difficult things like running 100 miles in the cold and dark or using those miles to untangle our thoughts to be used in creative projects. Let’s add optimizing executive function to the list.

There are no hard numbers for what proportion of the restaurant industry is neurodivergent, but there are estimates of 1 in 24. Compared to the accepted global average of 1 in 5, that suggests that restaurants are a place where neurodivergent individuals can thrive, or are at least attracted to. Just like running, I would posit. It’s a sport that can provide sensory regulation by being a form of stimming as well as emotional release and structured routine5 – all essential tools for good mental health. It makes sense that Bobby’s advice for restaurant workers to run a marathon might allow issues with executive function to be overcome a little more easily.

“I see many great, talented people in my industry that might struggle with executive function, meaning planning hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. I see a lot of people getting way overwhelmed, and I’m like, ‘Hold on. Break this down into bites that you can do.’”

He tells me that you can cram for the quartermaster sommelier exam in the exact way you can cram your marathon training. You can’t.

“The snowball of knowledge is like the snowball of fitness,” Bobby explains. “If you build a sandcastle at the beach, the water will wash it all away. But if you build for a marathon or to be a Master Sommelier, and you’ve studied daily, weekly, monthly? Nobody gets to wash that away.”

Beginning his fifth decade of running marathons and with that Master Sommelier title, I suspect that Bobby Stuckey’s advice is worth following.

Thanks for reading
Raz x

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Yes, public figures from athletes to royalty, musicians to supermodels through the ages have influenced societal norms. King George III endorsing Wedgwood pottery c.1800 is now recognized as a very early form of marketing, and Twiggy hypebeasted the miniskirt in the 1960s. This isn’t anything new. Just because it’s 'now’ happening in running (Pre was the OG running influencer IMHO), it doesn’t make it inherently bad.

Am I an influencer? Am I media? Yes to both. Some of the most influential people over history have been journalists, whether in print or broadcast media, so there’s nothing to shy away from there. No reason to draw a distinction. In my little corner of the world, I’m happy to be labeled as an influencer, if that’s required.

But I don’t film myself running like the new cohort of IG- and TikTok-based influencers does. That’s how they disseminate their messages, after all. For the vast majority of my time running there isn’t even anyone with me to snap a photo for socials. What is an issue is the increasing science pointing to how overstimulating watching short-form video is, and how the repeated, addicting dopamine hits are so damaging for our long-term attention spans without imparting any information deeper than a headline.

As I outlined in last Thursday’s article, however, influencers also bring many positives to the table. Sure, they can raise more money for charity than most, and using their platform to highlight issues close to their hearts is something that they’re able to do, whether they choose to or not. An influencer’s followings can inspire movements. Is that enough to balance out the brain rot? It’s not nothing.

“An overwhelming proportion of this new cohort of runners since 2020 are women, and running isn’t always the most approachable sport… Influencers like Emily Shane and Celina Stephenson, who I wrote about in 2023, have been massive trailblazers in getting young women to believe that they even can.

“Seeing these people running marathons that they either never thought they could, or running them in a way that looks genuinely fun is why the London Marathon had over a million entries for the 2026 edition.

“The stories that influencers tell can change the idea of running a marathon from being aspirational to being something that’s possible. As a lifelong runner, all I want is for more people to experience how cool running is.”

I found it interesting that almost 1% of my readers hit the unsubscribe button after last Thursday’s piece. Whether that was because I was highlighting the atrocities of ICE or whether I was sympathetic to influencers is unclear, so here I am doubling down. Good riddance, either way.

On the other end of the media length scale, I sat down to watch a video podcast the other day. It was a really interesting topic with two really interesting hosts, but I turned it off after five minutes. It was taking too long. I wanted to consume the information from that 50-minute video in 10 minutes.

I fully understand that idle chitter chatter is exactly what a lot of people want from their podcasts – that’s why they’re so popular – but I’m all about efficiency. I want to vacuum up as many tidbits of information as possible in as short a time. That’s why I prefer newsletters and other magazine-style articles. I get that deeper research, delivered quickly.

If both those ideas of influencers still turn you off, consider your own position as an influencer. Yes, you. Every time you go for a run, you’re influencing someone. Running is a radical act, so goes the opening line of my book, and when you run, you make other people feel something.

Other runners, driving past in their car, might crane their necks to see if they know you, or to see what shoes you’re wearing. Others may get annoyed and mutter, “What are you running from?” Or they’ll lean out of their car yelling, “Who’s going to carry the boats?” But just know that you’re making them feel something.

In this world of self-medicating numbness via doomscroll, that’s an important act. It’s a service to society that’s rooted in intention and self-care. It’s that notion of turning up for yourself that might even inspire someone to pull their running shoes on later that day. Yeah, you’re an inspiration every time you go for a run.

That is the power of Influence. Lean into it.

A look inside This is Running

A photo from last year’s Altadena to Palisades 50k ultra relay is on page 33 of This is Running. Taken by Connor Simpson, it’s a shot of the historic Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, and I love it. Here are a couple of photos that Connor took of the book.

That race raised well over $50,000 for wildfire relief-related charities last year, and this year’s edition includes options for relay teams, solo runners, and cyclists. I’ll be helping out at the first aid station in Eagle Rock. Sign up if you’re in Los Angeles on Feb 7, or click to donate.

Rebuilding L.A. is an ultramarathon, not a sprint.

Something to read

I was emailing with last week, after he quoted Hunter S. Thompson in his excellent newsletter, and he sent me this link to Thompson’s essay on runners.

This essay was included in Hey, Rube, the final book Thompson published before his death in February 2005. I re-read this collection of 80+ essays not long ago, and his distrust of government and police feels even more prescient than ever. I wonder what the notoriously vocal anti-fascist would say about the goings on in 2026. Probably that he told us so.

If you’re an HST fan, I’d love to know your thoughts on this New York Times article from the weekend, titled: ‘Did Hunter S. Thompson Really Kill Himself?’ It doesn’t matter, of course. He’s been dead for over 20 years now, and his legacy remains as unimpeachable as the president.

Running Sucks Haiku of the Week

Almost pain-free now
I’ll write about my tendons
After my first run

It’s been a longer than expected road to recovery from this bout of achilles tendinitis, but I think it’s almost over. I went on a little quarter-mile jog with my eldest son the other day, and have been searching for a violent reaction, but nothing so far.

The older I’ve got, the longer these soft tissue injuries have taken to heal, but I’ve been patient. I’m excited to go run again – I’ve missed it deeply – but I’ll continue being patient. I think I’ll follow a Couch to 5K program to get back into the swing of things.

Thanks for reading,
Raz x

CONNECT - Instagram / Strava

Here’s a quick one: Last night, I watched a short video clip of ICE, the USA’s secret police, shooting a 21-year-old man in Santa Ana, California in the eye before dragging him away along the concrete. He will never see out of his left eye again.

I wrote about Keep Runnin’ Santa Ana and the prominence of ICE in that part of California in my first article of 2025.

I have a theory that the world has always been on the knife edge of fascism, but positioning the Nazis (the fascists, for clarity) as the bad guys who lost World War 2 has been our saving grace, tipping the balance when directing young minds away from their autocratic tendencies.

WW2 ended over 80 years ago in September 1945 and many of the people who told kids those stories (grandparents with first-hand experience of war) are no longer with us. History class is great, necessary even, but we know that even the best students don’t really pay attention to textbooks as much as they do to granny spinning a yarn about how grandpa went and vanquished the Germans (note how that narrative appeals to xenophobes as well).

Those tales paint a picture of good guys and bad guys, like a Clint Eastwood classic, even if the reality of global geopolitics is infinitely more complex. A large, vocal and visible portion of the United States wanted to support and fight for the other side in WW2, for instance. The narrative of winning, on the same side as the good guys has made that uncomfortable truth fall into the shadows much more easily. Stories are important.

Over on LinkedIn, capital-S Storytelling is the latest hiring fad in how companies are marketing their wares. It’s a business strategy. Telling stories about running is what I’ve been doing here for the past three years, but I’ve been doing it elsewhere about musicians, movie franchises, and then various corporate entities for a full quarter-century, so I’m fully onboard with the ChatGPT-generated bullet points that unemployed marketing consultants are getting hundreds of lightbulb reactions for over there.

In the running world, for instance, it’s the reason you give yourself for caring about your Bandits (sci-fi cool) or your Nikes (heritage cool), your Satisfies (renegade cool) or your World Marathon Majors (gotta collect ‘em all). It’s all narrative. It’s all world-building. It’s all storytelling. It’s something to belong to.

One of the strategies that running brands use to position themselves as got-to-own items is the humble influencer. By partnering with these intensely popular online figures, who share their lives in shortform videos on TikTok and Instagram, a little bit of that popularity rubs off onto their brand. It’s the power of endorsement, and it’s all woven into the fabric of the larger narratives owning the conversation. How do the brand’s values align with this individual’s? And can you identify with that? Yes? Buy this product, then.

I sat down with Lydia Keating a few weeks ago to talk about her life as a running influencer and her burgeoning run club, goodstory.

A competitive rower at college, Lydia was burnt out by the end of that chapter of her life. When she moved to Los Angeles in 2017 to forge a career as a television writer, she found it easy to denounce the athletic side of herself.

“At the time, I felt like I had to choose either being the jock or the artsy creative person, so I didn’t work out for a couple of months but then I was like, ‘Wait now I have mental health issues.’”

So she started running. Lydia was still fit enough from college to immediately complete a trail marathon in SF, which set her off on a decade of running a marathon every year, “but always for the vibes, always at party pace, because I loved the feeling of movement.”

In LA, Lydia was doing stand-up, getting comfortable telling stories onstage. When the pandemic hit, she downloaded TikTok and started using that as a way of sharing her comedy online. A year in, having not been onstage for that whole time, Lydia started to question if that was even something she wanted to do any more, but she’d been running the whole time. So she started sharing her running. And her notifications started blowing up.

“I think people found the idea that you could move your body just for fun, to feel good, for mental health reasons, was novel at the time. One of my most viral videos was, ‘Come for a 15 mile run with me.’ I think the idea of putting on a fun outfit and doing that for two hours – just for fun – people were like, ‘You can do that??’ I think the casualness that I approached running with felt approachable to a lot of people.”

The approachability is an important point. An overwhelming proportion of this new cohort of runners since 2020 are women, and running isn’t always the most approachable sport. Sure, brands like Lululemon, Athleta, and Oiselle making high-quality running apparel for women have been a huge part of it, but influencers like Emily Shane and Celina Stephenson, who I wrote about in 2023 have been massive trailblazers in getting young women to believe that they even can.

Seeing these people running marathons that they either never thought they could, or running them in a way that looks genuinely fun is why the London Marathon had over a million entries for the 2026 edition. The stories that influencers tell can change the idea of running a marathon from being aspirational to being something that’s possible. As a lifelong runner, all I want is for more people to experience how cool running is.

One of the very coolest parts of modern running is how many different options there are. Yes, you can run a marathon once a month, or you can run a marathon never. You can find a run club of people who look like you, or you can find a run club where your standard three-mile run ends at a bar where you can choose to stand up and tell a story to your fellow runners. That’s goodstory, Lydia’s Brooklyn-based run club, which is wholly indicative of her personality.

“It’s me figuring out how I blend these two parts of me that I love and want to coexist.

Once I’m at a certain level of fitness, where running becomes less of a chore, I find that running is the most beautifully creative moment of my day. It’s linked to the flow state, where you can drift off into a mindful meditation, quietly untangling all your thoughts into something more cohesive. Brendan Leonard quite poetically framed running as your own personal cabin in the woods. Appropriate that a powerhouse creative can come up with such a turn of phrase.

Lydia has plans for building out goodstory, as well. Right now it’s just the monthly run club, but she’s also placed a writing workshop under the umbrella, and wants to create a physical quarterly magazine. It’s ambitious, but it’s what she wants to spend her time on, even if none of it’s making money just yet.

“I should think about how I make money from it, she laughs. “There’s something about that that feels antithetical to what goodstory is, which is people moving their bodies together and then sharing beautiful, vulnerable, funny, weird stories together.”

If you’re in Los Angeles at 8.30am on Sunday 18 January, join the LA chapter of goodstory. You can run 3.1 miles through West Hollywood and then share a beautiful, vulnerable, funny, weird story about RISK with me and Lydia at the Salomon store. We’ve got food and drink for after the run, and we’re going to have some fun.

Join goodstory in LA on 1/18

Links and further reading

Thanks for reading
Raz x
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In honor of Paris Fashion Week, coming up next week (no, I won’t be there), let’s talk about how we look when we run, and why. A is for Aesthetic.

When you boil it down to its purest essence, it doesn’t matter if it’s road, trail or treadmill, it’s just running. It doesn’t matter if you’re at the start of your running journey or if you’re running the sixth marathon of this calendar year, your pace is your pace, and every pace has a place.

So why could it matter what you’re wearing?

We’re not talking about aerodynamics and moisture-wicking fabrics here. You can think about that technical stuff when you’re looking to hone your marginal gains, but we’re talking about pure fashion here.

If we’re dressing for the job that we want, the modern runner’s outfit is less marathon podium star and more run club winner. All the brands showcasing their wares in Paris at the end of January are banking on you wanting a couple of premium pieces in your outfit. Fit for a Local Legend, right?

If you’re wondering why running brands are even at PFW, it’s just a trade expo. It’s a convenient time for brands to sell their 2026 lines to retailers, but with the proximity of premium catwalks and the verve of Parisian streets as the backdrop. Yes, it’s somewhat more glamorous than a windowless convention center in Texas.

An increasing emphasis is put onto running aesthetics these days. The big brands have been at it for a while, of course, with Adidas’s Y-3 collaboration lasting over two decades, but I suspect that you wouldn’t know this much about running’s attendance at one of the Big Four Fashion Weeks before this single facet of run culture became so poured over.

While I believe that run culture is far, far more than the superficiality of what clothes you run in (imagine if someone told you Japanese culture was just kimonos – you’d think they were dumb as bricks), what you wear does influence much about how you interact with the world.

Dressing the part gives you confidence, especially in a new situation, such as your first time at a run club. Sometimes that’s wearing a Boston Marathon singlet and Vaporflys to flaunt your capabilities, and other times it’s having a sleeve of tattoos to indicate that you’ve got the music recommendations they need. Whatever group you’re aiming for, you simply want to be seen.

With all that said, expressing yourself authentically is key to the above. It’s a sad fact that we’re all constantly being judged by how we look first, before anything else. If you’re using a strong first impression to find your tribe, that non-verbal communication has got to come from the heart. I often run in football shirts and band t-shirts when I go for a group run, for instance. Both are great conversation starters, but you’ve got to have the knowledge to make those conversations great.

If, in 2026, there’s a move towards dressing like a schlub to work out, what does that indicate? Authenticity, again, and there’s nothing realer than following your feelings.

You’re running. You’re putting your body through some effort. It makes sense to be comfortable while you do that, doesn’t it? Yes, that can mean your softest garms, but there’s also pure value in not being uncomfortable, and if you are self-conscious about how you’re dressed, you won’t feel good, and if you don’t feel good, your run will be less enjoyable.

When I’m running on my own, I dip back into more standard technical wear, because that makes my run more comfortable. It makes my run more enjoyable. And this is all about enjoying your run more, right? It’s good to remember that we’re doing this for fun.

Get that chic singlet if it makes you feel good. Accessorize your cap with a heavy metal patch if that is what shows you off. Get the polka dot running shoes. Go have fun.

How far do you go to individualize your running fit? Local club singlet? Do you jump on every new release that’s marketed to you? Old race t-shirts from races you’ve run or older race t-shirts from races in your birth year? Do you have a Pinterest board as an aspirational lookbook? Or do you, like me, wear a 20-year-old pair of black Nike shorts?

Leave a comment

The possibilities are endless. Please tell us in a comment why you wear what you wear and when!

Pre-order my book, please!

Hello, friends. It’s less than three months until I can share This is Running with you properly. I’ll be sharing tidbits from what’s inside the book over that time, and I hope you can see from this photo that it’s a beautifully meaty book. It feels good in the hand.

If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, here are the links to help you do that. It’s available in every single country on every platform. (Amazon sadly helps me the most right now.)

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

USA - Amazon US | Bookshop US | Barnes & Noble
UK - Amazon UK | Bookshop UK | Waterstones

goodstory in Los Angeles this weekend

If you remember the storytelling event that I was part of in Brooklyn back in October, one of the organizers Lydia Keating is hosting her run club goodstory in West Hollywood this Sunday 11/18 at 8.30am from the Salomon store.

We’re going to try on some shoes, run 3 miles around WeHo, and then we’ll all tell a story. It can be fictional or true. It can be about running or not. The theme is RISK. It’s fun, I promise.

Lydia and goodstory are the subject of this Thursday’s profile because I think it’s an awesome idea. I’m going to try and send that Thursday story out on Wednesday to paid subscribers, because that’s a cool thing to do. Upgrade if you want that. Here’s a poster.

Support me for 80 cents a week

Last week on Running Sucks

I like to start the year with an important story. 2025 was about ICE (still topical), and 2024 was about the effects of white supremacy (yep).

2026 saw a cool story about the first South Asian running store owner in the USA. People who look like me in leadership positions? Yes, please. Read it, share it, support it. If you really want a more equitable world, that’s how it works.

About parenting

This isn’t about my parenting per se, but has a way with words and manages to distill everything that is good, great, and awful about living with one’s offspring into a delightful and charming rundown. I agree with him.

Semi-Rad

I Would Like To Address Some Clichés And Surprises About Parenting

One of my newish favorite images of my kid, among the thousands, is him standing on the front of a lumber cart at a big-box home improvement store, holding his “sword” that his mom made for him out of parts from a toddler tool kit, wearing a dress that his mom also made him—really just kind of a skirt made out of a piece of fabric with beetles printed o…

Read more

4 months ago · 52 likes · 8 comments · Brendan Leonard

It’s been a year since the Los Angeles Fires

Back in 2024, I settled into a wonderful mode of occasionally running my longish weekend run in Altadena with my friend . She lived there back, but lost her house in the fire. We haven’t run together since, and I miss it.

This interview by Jinghuan with Matt Fitzgerald is a brilliantly tender look at being a caregiver, and the conversation comes back to running frequently. Intertwined themes of endurance and resilience abound.

Wings & Spikes by Jinghuan Liu Tervalon

“You Don’t Have What It Takes. You Find What It Takes”

About one in four Americans is a caregiver to someone with disabilities or chronic conditions. This means one in four runners is a caregiver. Inspired by Matt Fitzgerald’s recent appearance on the podcast, Excellence, Actually, It’s Never All Bad: How to Suffer…

Read more

4 months ago · 8 likes · Jinghuan Liu Tervalon and Matt Fitzgerald

One of my big regrets (in Running Sucks terms) was not centering my 2023 interview with Matt Fitzgerald around COVID and its effect on runners.

We had a long chat about long COVID, which he was suffering from, but I had been made to feel so insane for my strong position on the virus that I chickened out of writing about it.

I’m very much looking forward to reading his book about his recovery as a runner.

Running Sucks Haiku of the Week

Little one’s ill again
Weekend plans all went to shit
Try again next week

Maybe it’s because he’s in pre-K. Maybe it’s because he got Covid last summer. Either way, he’s a sofa-bound mess and I’ve had a few extra duties on my plate as a result. Being able to run is a luxury of time and resources. We’ll all do well to remember that.

A to Z of running

If you have a request for this A to Z of Running, you can leave your suggestion in this form, and I’ll add it to the list.

Submit an entry for the A to Z

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Thanks for reading,
Raz x