Running craze of the 70's ; what caused it? can it be re done?

Frank Shorter and Bill Rodger dominating on the world stage.

Population of runners wrote:

craze of the 70's ; what caused it? can it be redone?

depends what you mean by this. a good argument could be made that right now we are in the biggest running boom ever. more people will complete marathons this year than ever before. in 1976 about 25,000 people completed a marathon. this year there will be 5 or 6 marathons that will have that many finishers all by themselves. more people will run road races of other lengths as well.

the more interesting question is what has caused the disappearance of the sub 2:30 marathoner, as well as corresponding times for 5ks etc.

it seems to me, as far as people running for health we are in the biggest boom ever.

it just has not translated to a desire on many of the runners parts to be highly competitive. not sure why.

Non-competitve running is more lucrative to all companies involved and the Gov't doesn't care about setting up a Moroccon-style State sponsored athletics program to seek and develop talented youth to olympic hopefuls. You don't need to be a genius to figure out the rest.

-Soup

It caught the imagination of the Baby Boomers. The only time the USA has been able to produce large numbers of world-class runners at 5k & longer was '64 to '88.

Get rid of X-box and Playstation and then maybe it can be recreated.

You have to look at the running boom in the context of the times...the late 1960's and early 1970's were a time of counter-culture, introspection, etc. A young man taking time out to train full time and work a part time job would not have been unusual. As the "me" and "consumerism" of the 1980's exploded to the forefront, the running boom died off. It's not likely to happen again, at least the way it did then.

More like get rid of soccer and lacrosse!

The affluent eighty's and nineties, that's what Craig Vifgin says is wrong with American distance running.

Alejandro wrote:

affluent eighty's and

"eighties"

It was just a fun thing that a lot of us fell in love with. We did have a good many successful role models in our fairly recent history (Shorter, Ryun, Schul, Mills, Lindgren, Young, Batcheler, etc) and that's different than now. But you can't recreate a spontaneous movement. I'd love to bottle the feeling we had for the sport then and give it to everyone today, but everyone has to find their own way to wherever they want to go.

What's THIS? An Alejandro post with no bashing of Sarah??

Lord have mercy.

Hey, don't forget Kenneth H. Cooper's landmark book "Aerobics".

Yes our lord is a good lord indeed.

? wrote:

What's THIS? An Alejandro post with no bashing of Sarah??

Lord have mercy.

Yes yes, I agree each time is unique unto itself and the 2000s are yet again different to the 80s.The times keep redefining themselves. Running is so simple and is the basis of most other sports; so can endure and have potential to grow in most times imho.

People consider running for many reasons, and from experience believe it has to do with a feeling of making a real difference in ones life, to empower the notion that no one can set limits on us.

The net results of our effort will make us get better, and for this experience feel like a champion, even though most of us haven't set a world record.

How that notion filters through the masses depends on the way we continuously conduct our sport. Champions have the power to make people realize this; but only if this is done with sportsmanlike character and a positive personality. Some of us need to be better ambassadors for the sport in order to attract participants.

We must keep our eye on the big picture so we can attract more of our 260 million US residents to run. If we can do that we stand a better chance of producing world record holders and world champions. This is simply a matter of probability. We increase the odds by having more participants.

(Somewhere in some city in this country lives the man and woman or boy and girl who can beat world times.)

the problem is there are too many "distance" runners, anyonne who isn't racing for time should stay the hell away from the starting line and from running clubs

Selah.

Arbusto wrote:

You have to look at the running boom in the context of the times...the late 1960's and early 1970's were a time of counter-culture, introspection, etc. A young man taking time out to train full time and work a part time job would not have been unusual. As the "me" and "consumerism" of the 1980's exploded to the forefront, the running boom died off. It's not likely to happen again, at least the way it did then.

exactly. no doubt in my mind that what made those runners great was that they lived in a kind of bohemia. They trained their asses off and raced to eat. Running is an outlet of culture and you can easily see the connections between the death of american art, music, intellectualism etc all coincide with the death of bohemia. Professionalism is what destroyed american distance running

The U.S.A. vs. the U.S.S.R. battles are what made Track in the 70's an interesting sport to the U.S.A.

With the Cold War is was huge to beat the Russians in any way possible. Crap, even Chess was huge with Bobby Fisher going against Boris Spasky early in that decade.

yoyo... wrote:

the problem is there are too many "distance" runners, anyonne who isn't racing for time should stay the hell away from the starting line and from running clubs

Well, THAT certainly wasn't the mindset of the 70s.