The Weakly: a new panelist, Nike's woes + using gravity to run
Florence Papougnot of Your Friendly Runners and Hot Boys Athletics is the second speaker at the Run club Culture event in London on August 8th.
It is one month today until the first Running Sucks event in London and I’m very pleased to announce that Florence Papougnot of Your Friendly Runners and Hot Boys Athletics is the second panelist for Run Club Culture: a conversation.
You can read Flo’s story below, and after speaking to the third guest panelist (announced this coming Thursday), I know that this is going to be a cracking evening.
That ticket info is right here. All proceeds will go towards equipment hire and pizza. No profits here. What’s new?!
Last week on Running Sucks
I featured Florence Papougnot’s journey of building her young life around running. Whether it’s her social life or her immediate personal goals, she found it first through helping to build Your Friendly Runners up from 0 to 100, and then with Hot Boys Athletics’s performance-oriented regimens.
Take a read. Flo’s got some great insights.
How to make Running Suck less
Do you ever find yourself spending too long thinking about the best way to start running?
I’m talking about the moment when you’ve already got your kicks on, and you’re standing outside your front door. You’ve already come to terms with it being too hot, too cold or too wet. You’re ready to start running. Do you just put one foot in front of the other?
From a standing start, try leaning forward slightly. From your ankles, though - not from your waist.
When you do this, you use gravity and momentum as the primary force for forward propulsion in those initial moments of your run. As your center of balance moves over your toes, your dominant leg will move forwards to stabilize you. That initial lean means the choice of putting one foot in front of the other is taken away from you. You’re in science’s hands now. Try it. Could be fun.
This week in 2023 on Running Sucks
If it’s been a year since I posted this, it means that it’s another year in the books for the LA Craft Runners. The craft beer celebrators celebrate their 7th anniversary this week, with three easy miles to and from a local Los Angeles brewery.
In the news
A couple of weeks later, and I’m still seeing people talking about this WSJ article from June about How Nike Missed the Boom in Running Culture to companies like On and Hoka.
There’s all sorts of chatter about Nike losing its culture because of poor leadership and whatnot, but it’s fun to think about it from a boardroom perspective. A couple of numbers for you:
Nike achieved $51 billion revenue in 2023 - a 2% year-on-year increase
On had $2 billion revenue in 2023 (26% quarterly growth was disappointing)
Hoka had $1.8 billion revenue in 2023
Is Nike in the mud? Losing a maximum of less than 10% of revenue to the main challenger brands? Not at all. Do they need to be better? In my opinion, they have always needed to be better, but they remain an aspirational brand, regardless.
Elsewhere on Substack
returned to Substack recently, and here’s a how-to guide to running faster, if that’s something you’re interested in doing. You might not be shackled to the capitalist constraints of MORE! BIGGER! FASTER! I hope you aren’t. You’ll be healthier in mind, imho. Either way, 2% growth wasn’t enough for the Nike board, but it is for Michael Easter. It’s a good read, so go read it.
Running Sucks Haiku of the Week
Hope I press publish
With fewer typos this week
Thanks, edit button
Yes, as I move to this twice-weekly cadence, the pressure to self-edit increases. All my deadlines are self-inflicted, and all my errors are my own. I’m going to read this through one time before publishing. Just once. This is how I have fun.
Housekeeping
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RUN CLUB CULTURE: a conversation - GET YOUR TICKETS for the Aug 8 event in London. They’re going medium fast!
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Thanks for reading
- Raz