It's all about the people

Another year of being a writer, plus Love Trails Festival and Nike's Radical Airflow

Today is the 26th anniversary of me being a journalist.

I was a fresh-faced 17-year-old whose primary motivation was meeting the bands he was falling in love with, but the secondary bonus of free concert tickets and advance access to new albums was mighty appealing.

The band in question back on the 13th of July of the year 2000 was My Vitriol. I’d heard their song ‘Always Your Way’ on the radio late in 1999 and picked up their demo CD with three songs that I soon learned by heart.

My signed copy of My Vitriol’s double A-side of Always Your Way and Pieces from 1999.

A question that I’ve been asked a few times over the last few months of touring my book and being asked rather than asking the questions is the similarities between my former life as a music journalist and my new life as a sports writer / running journalist.

It’s the people. It’s their stories.

At the start, I found it somewhat enjoyable to rate the albums and concerts I was experiencing. It was community journalism, I told myself. It was reporting. It had value to the general public. Over the next 15 years that I spent writing about music, however, I became increasingly disgruntled with the task of judging another human’s art.

My favorite thing was finding music that I loved and sharing it with as many people chose to read my work. For me, that was the top and the bottom of it, but I soon realized that I mostly enjoyed talking to the artists behind the art.

I loved finding out why they made this music. I loved trying to understand how I found myself reflected in the searing riffs of a band from Sacramento that had two members with matching black eyes when I met them in a university union backroom. I was a quiet boy from suburban London. What could I possibly have in common with these men?

The occasions when I was commissioned by a magazine editor to write about a band that I didn’t particularly enjoy were spent wrought with the need to write something entertaining, at least. I had to go in two-footed and try to hobble this band for everyone’s enjoyment. It wasn’t a healthy way to think about things, but people loved to read a withering, punchy critique about… anything really.

As much as I appeared to revel in the glory and back-patting of a 400-word shanking of mine going viral, I disliked it deeply. Being the center of attention wasn’t the goal. That spotlight was for the bands whose music I loved, wasn’t it?

The same pattern is evident while writing about running, of course.

I started Running Sucks in 2023 to celebrate the world of running that I’ve been embedded in since far before my love of music crystallized. While I did discover that the commonality I had with Will Haven was simply an enjoyment of the vast soundscapes that underpinned their monstrous tunes, when I talk to runners, I share their world much more directly. It’s more instantly relatable, and that’s likely why I’ve found this work to be the most rewarding so far in my life.

I love the people and I love their stories, and life is too short to focus on anything but the best, so you can look forward to some features on some of running’s true greats over the next few weeks, and beyond.

Here’s what’s on my slate at the moment:

• Kilian Jornet on the state of trail

• What Camille Herron is trying to bring to ultra running

• The man who made Kilian Jornet’s 2025 challenge possible

• Josh Kerr’s eternal quest to make track great (again?) for Tempo Journal

• My second, third and fourth books.

Love Trails

The last thing I wrote was about TrailCon and the work they need to do to address the dire lack of diversity on show. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum was Love Trails Festival, which I attended the tenth edition of last week.

Full and massive credit goes to the festival for curating a line-up of speakers and run leaders with an even gender split and immensely diverse backgrounds. Bravo. It shows how easy it is to hold a fully-integrated trail event that’s focused on running, music, and creativity.

I had a lot of friends in attendance, and after just one weekend in the Gower Peninsula, I fully understand why so many of them return time and again. I am manifesting a return in 2027!

Nike Radical Airflow

Nike is having to claw their way back into the running world and wider sporting relevance, and they’re doing it with the Radical Airflow jersey.

I think the science behind the Radical Airflow material is probably as sound as the MothTech science that allowed Satisfy to digitally map Adidas’ three stripes onto the chest of one of their shirts, but whatever. For me, this has been a year-long masterclass in sports marketing.

Leaving a full year between its debut at Western States 2025 and its public release, the strange, white holey shirt sold out immediately in independent running stores across the USA. Multiple athletes got custom holey shirts at the Pre Classic and then, last night, I saw Jannik Sinner wearing a jacket with the holey tech while clutching his trophy at Wimbledon.

It may have launched undercover at Western States, but Radical Airflow appears to be a central technology in this rapidly warming world.

Whatever your thoughts on Nike, I think it’s kinda cool that the largest sports company on the planet has launched their latest marketing onslaught through the trail world.

Thanks for reading
Raz xx

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