Last week, I did two things that were slightly different for me and incredibly rewarding:
The University of Portland invited me to talk about launching a running product with a bunch of very tuned-in marketing graduate students.
I spoke at the Burbank Book Festival about transforming research into narrative non-fiction.
The vast majority of the events that I’ve been involved with over the first six months of my book’s release have been with, for, and by runners. The chance to interact with a wider audience was welcome, but I found that I needed to code switch my language after being in a runner’s world for so long.
I was able to get a little more esoteric into the academic method of my writing, rather than simply talking about how many marathons you need to have run before my book makes sense. (It’s zero marathons, by the way.)
For instance, one chap I spoke to immediately and excitedly called This is Running out as an ethnography, which was massively pleasing to me, someone who uses ethnographic methods to analyze the politics of space.
Get your copy of This is Running (my book)
USA - Bookshop.org US | Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Signed copy (US)
UK - Bookshop.org UK | Amazon UK | Waterstones
Review This is Running - Goodreads
This week saw my book being carried by two new brick-and-mortar stores:
Routine Pleasure in Woodstock, NY - a beautiful new high-concept outdoors store in the town where Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst absolutely destroyed any possibility of a future Woodstock Festival.
Obet & Dels Coffee in Thai Town, Los Angeles - a minority-owned coffee shop on one of my favorite strips of Hollywood Blvd that serves an insane sweet turmeric coffee.
A primary goal of mine has always been to support independent businesses, so if you think your local run specialty store or coffee shop should have This is Running on their shelves, connect us and I’ll put a couple of copies in the mail to them directly, by hand.
Without this kind of support, we’re only left with the companies in the second half of this newsletter.
My next stop for in-person activities is back in the running world at San Francisco Running Company on Friday 16 October at 5pm for a happy hour and chat with Dylan Bowman about trail running in particular.
I’ll be driving up, so if there’s a run specialty store that you think I should pop into between LA and SF, drop me a line.
OH, NO! The NYC Marathon has… BANNED SOME CORPORATIONS?!?
The internet was up in arms last week when the New York City Marathon announced that they were not allowing cheer zones to feature brands that are not official sponsors of the marathon.
With less than a month to go until the race, the marketing strategies have been in place, and the budget has already been spent by all those other brands. I would have expected a scramble from in their offices and Slack channels (not an official sponsor), but I was surprised that so many normal, everyday, outwardly non-corporate Runners On The Internet were also outraged.
Because in my mind, cheer zones are about people cheering for people. It’s human connection at its finest and most altruistic. For me, cheer zones are for run clubs, family, friends, a stranger handing you a popsicle on a 100-degree day. For me, a multi-national corporation doesn’t come into it.
This morning, I received an email from a big publicity agency about McDonald’s having five (5!) cheer zones on the Chicago Marathon course, launching their latest nose-to-tail culinary offering: Pickle Boost.
Maybe the NYC Marathon saw this nonsense coming, and acted swiftly.
My A-League contact (it’s me) informed me that McDonald’s initially tested the Pickle Boost shots at New Zealand soccer team Auckland FC in the spring. It makes sense that they are cashing in on the running boom
There are some good studies about how pickle brine causes a visceral, neural reflex in cramping runners due to its sharp vinegary flavor. Basically, it tricks your brain into letting your muscles work again.
It’s a remarkable move towards sustainability, as McDonald’s offers a mindful repurposing of the unpalatably sweet effluent from their budget burger accoutrements as a nutritional supplement to help runners overcome cramp.
As an aside, it’s something of a miss that McD’s / Macca’s didn’t partner with Nike ACG on the Picklejus shoe launch at UTMB, but both companies are massive entities that struggle to be nimble enough to retain immediacy, as per Lee Glandorf’s interview with ANU on The Sweat Lookbook.
Other PR emails that might be in the Running Sucks inbox next week:
Chevron is sponsoring a lube station at the inaugural Gulf of America Marathon (sold out already, sorry) using somewhat refined refinery waste. The instructions are to simply rub a small amount of oily sludge on the insides of your thighs to help prevent that dreaded marathon chafing!
Nestlé is being lauded for launching a program committed to helping brand new mothers train for their races by providing free childcare AND free nutrition for their newborns for a maximum of four weeks, at which point you can go back to breastfeeding. Promise.
Coca-Cola is set to be the new hydration partner for every race in the world. Having fastidiously privatized every water source on the planet (and somehow adding bromine to it), they’re bottling it in the perfect bottles for runners who demand to drink water out of single-use bottles.
Palantir has finally disclosed its long-standing partnership with Ray-Ban and Meta. Your local run club remains unfazed by the news that it already knew, and has a marathon discount code for its community, attached to every purchase of the latest $60 t-shirt.
Walmart is furthering their commitment to America’s minimum wage by lobbying for all race volunteers to be paid with SNAP benefits (redeemable only at Walmart properties (and actually not for food - they got a government exemption)).
Nike is continuing their long-celebrated work using women with a series of half-marathons around the world.
thanks for reading,
Raz xx
ME - Instagram | Strava | email: raz@runningsucks101.com
It's the policy's exclusion of founder brands and smaller organizations that still actually embody parts of the community yet can't pay-to-play at the major marathon level. In NYC it's Bandit, Minted, Miler or Bakline. Nobody is upset for McDonalds Nike or Zales. It signals the purpose of the event has evolved to be pure $$ and not the city or it's people
That last one is spooky.