Why are runners so annoying?
A question on the lips of many runners and non-runners alike. Plus: Hello, New York!
Last week, I was a guest on
, which was very cool. It was a fun conversation.Like so many, I’ve been a fan of Anne Helen Petersen’s work for some time, and my favorite piece of hers was about The Portal from 2023. At the tail end of 2024, I had a great conversation with Anne about how running has fitted into her life, including in relation to her Portal. Take a read.
About that marathon moment
One of the writers whose work resonates with me the most frequently is Anne Helen Petersen in her Culture Study newsletter. I’ve linked to her marvelous 2023 piece on The Portal before, where Anne documents and helps explain the creative surge that arrives for many in midlife.
When I read the questions sent in by
readers, I I had to stop and laugh. While it seemed that all the questions were sent in by runners, a couple of them seemed to be rather annoyed by the behavior of… runners.“What is it about running that invites the smug evangelism?”
“What’s up with so many Running People being absolutely belligerent about running marathons?”
There was another question about Strava drama, which was the icing on the cake.
Why do you think runners are so annoying??
Here are some suggestions that AI (ugh) made to one reader, Mark. They both seem valid…
Because they constantly remind you how far they ran. As if you asked.
Because they think everyone cares about their carb-loading strategies.
We covered a few other topics in the podcast, including a moment about intimacy, because it was recorded while I was in the throes of writing this piece.
Listen to The Culture Study Podcast ‘Does Running Culture Suck?’ (It doesn’t.)
How does Anne Helen Petersen makes running suck less?
“When it's 50 degrees and raining and it's not going to change and you just have to go out there and do it. The thing that's helped with that is getting better rain gear. That makes a tremendous difference. When you're not shivering and completely sopping.”
“If there's any way to not bring my phone, I don't bring it, and when I've looked for running watches, I always want something with the least connectivity. It's an opportunity for me to give myself space from that stuff. If I could have a boom box just following me around, that would be kind of fun, but it's not worth the psychic pull of having the phone with me.”
Last week on Running Sucks
I wrote about how culture and commerce can survive within running activations such as The Speed Project, which has garnered a cult following over the past decade-plus, including every brand and their storytelling desert dog.
Even if every brand does want that same desolate desert landscape in their ultra tough marketing, it would be facile to suggest it’s the same story every time when this year’s headline narrative was that 50% of the solo runners were women. Nils Arend loves to keep it interesting, even if the new checkpoint race he devised this year was won by a brand team. It’s difficult to name a truly independent team, though.
If you’re interested in the process, I wrote this piece through a similar lens as my BSc dissertation, which looked at the trade-offs involved in corporate sponsorship of live music venues. Los Angeles loves naming a big building after a multi-billion dollar business (see: SoFi, KIA, Staples/Crypto.com), but that thesis looked at the situation in Manchester, England in 2004. It’s the same, but different.
Have scientists figured out why we feel how we feel after running a long way?
We know that we first burn carbs for energy during marathons, and once that’s depleted, we burn fat, right? Well, a team of brain researchers in Spain have discovered that a specific fat that we burn is in our brain. Relax. the myelin regenerates.
That fat in our brain is called Myelin and it acts as an electrical insulator for brain cells. Which specific parts of the brain is the myelin reduction found? The parts responsible for…
Motor coordination
Sensory integration
Emotion processing
There are lots of questions about sample size, gender split, etc etc, but as an initial study it may well have shed some light upon exactly why our bodies and minds do the peculiar things they do after running for 20 miles.
This is the kind of research that your favorite gel brand should love to fund so they can tell you that ingesting 2kg of carbs per mile (that’s a joke) is the correct thing to do to maintain healthy myelin levels.
This article by
of was a nice and in-depth look at the report.
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Running Sucks Haiku of the Week
I wore a jacket
Even ran in the damned thing
Couldn’t hate it more
I’ve planned a few interviews, and planned a few runs. I thought about a long run around Manhattan on Saturday, taking in the West Side Highway, Central Park, the High Line, and Guy Fieri’s new chicken sandwich shop, but despite living in the UK for 30 years, I now panic when I see rain forecast.
Yes, the clouds were spitting oh so gently on Saturday morning when I ran around Silver Lake, so I put my lovely top-of-the-class Janji waterproof shell on for the first time in who knows how long, and I did not have a good time at all. It was HOT and SWEATY..
Tuesday pm: Brooklyn Track Club
Wednesday pm: Bridgerunners
Saturday am: The Glue Loop, Prospect Park - a $10 race!
Either way, I’ve set up a Running Sucks NYC WhatsApp group, so join that and we can keep in touch.
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Thanks for reading
Raz x
I am not annoying. Everyone around me just loves my stories about the runs I did and the shoes I want to buy.
We got into running (or in my case it started with going to the gym) for the same reason! London, in the early noughties was party central - and I was making big glossy shiny floor entertainment shows. 6 o'clock struck and every one would hot foot it to the pub for the night. After a few weeks, I was tired of eating crisps for dinner over G&Ts. Then a sales rep dropped flyers for the gym across the street in reception and that ended up being my get out. I figured, I'd tell people that I was going to the gym and would meet them in the pub afterwards. I did go to the gym and I did meet them in the pub afterwards. But they were so battered by the time I walked in, that they didn't realize that I was making a swift exit without touching a drink 10 or so minutes after!