Rediscovery

For sometime, I’ve had on my to-do list to go through all my stuff and do some major culling.  Afterall, much of what I own is of little or no interest to others and while I hope to stick around for a good while longer, why not unload some of this stuff now. This includes extra clothes of all sorts (13-14 pairs of running shoes and a bunch of race T-shirts I never wear.)  But the main targets are textbooks, notebooks, and notes I have from classes taken the past 10 years as well as a mix of books, many of which are running related, I have acquired over the years. While I pull some of these off the shelf on occasion, many have been collecting dust. Some have moved with me many times and I always need a bookcase or two to house them.

Included in this trove are copies of Running Times Magazine I’ve held on to since the 1980s. Or better said remnants of those copies. A few years ago, I decided hauling stacks of these magazines around was too much and I did an extensive process of clipping all the articles of interest and putting them in notebooks (eventually three such notebooks.)  This process was indeed time consuming since reading them led to a flood of memories. 

To back up, Running Times, founded in 1977 by Ed Ayers, was the go-to publication of running news and training strategies for more serious runners of all ages. At its inception, there was little out there – no internet or good training books. I would shortly devour the entire issue within a day or two, finding much of it relevant to my training, and even my injury cycles.  Somehow the writers knew what I needed. As time passed, Running Times increasingly catered to masters running.  Each issue typically had a full-page interview with an accomplished masters runner. Also, each year they would publish the prior year’s top U.S. masters runners by five-year age groups, citing the top three with their times from selected races, and five to eight honorable mention. This was due to the hard work of Don and Marian Lein, who compiled the results. This was how I got to know many around the country in my age group. In my early 60s I was ranked third twice and honorable mention once. 

Running Times was independent for 30 years before being acquired by Rodale Press (which published Runners World) in 2007. Rodale published both magazines for nine more years before discontinuing Running Times in 2016, saying they would incorporate Running Times-like articles into Runners World. But they didn’t. After a couple issues, it was clear Runners World was aiming to appeal to the mostly younger masses. Running Times was gone, solid gone!

So, back to my sorting project. It got waylaid by going through these notebooks of clipped Running Times articles. It was a rediscovery of just how good this magazine was. While some were over 30 years old, they seemed relevant today. Nothing today (print or digital) compares to the quality of what was offered through Running Times. It felt like I was visiting a long-lost friend and we were quickly catching up. 

I don’t plan to let these notebooks collect dust. The writing is too good to sit on the shelf untouched. I’ll put them in a visible spot and likely pull these notebooks out and peruse them more regularly.  I won’t have such trouble with textbooks on molecular biology or physics. They can go. But Running Times stays.  How I wish it was still around!