Harry Styles on the cover of Runners World

I’m also much more interested in reading about a celebrity who clearly had a passion for the sport and isn’t just running a marathon to check off a bucket list item.

Okay. Rolling Stone Australia. August 2016.
"Usain Bolt: What the World’s Fastest Man Means to Jamaica. The country’s greatest hero since Bob Marley runs in the Olympics for the last time." By Morgan Jenkins

Usain Bolt released the album Country Yutes in 2021 (admittedly after the article). And the piece is an article, not an interview.

Liam Paynes death probably played a role

this guy Styles is a role model for incels here wrapped up in elite nonsense.

as a hobby, running is fantastic, fresh air, fitness,

in a show, he's very unlikely to get fatigued.

when you can run 7 min miles for 3 hours.

only on letsrun could that be a bad thing.

sure us somewhat gifted runners take such times as laughable, i certainly though so, but more than ever respect anyone that attempts and does this type of thing, it's a real accomplishment.

as for health, the training needs to be well within you capabilities, but if you want to pr and go for it, maxing out for 4 months or so in training, why not\/

All I know is that I ran 2:30ish marathoner pretty.... I ran a few with guys who were trying to run 3 hours and wanted someone to run with them.

It STILL wasn't easy for me. Wasn't necessarily hard... but definitely wasn't easy. I was ready to stop.

2:07 for a non-African is not sub-elite. It is very much elite.

This is a serious question and I really don't mean it to be snarky.

Do we see magazines about basketball, football, baseball, or soccer feature regular people in celebrities as opposed to pros regularly?

I'm sure it happens from time to time, like when Usain bolt was featured because he was a big Manchester United fan, but generally speaking you're seeing actual pros on those sports magazines. Why is running so different?

This is where my head went as well, at least initially, but I think it comes from a place of insecurity.

This thread changed my mind and the article cemented my opinion that it’s a worthy article/feature and not a gimmick.

I don’t like his music but respect him as a person. Read the article. This is way more than “Brittany runs a 5k!!!”

Some Letsrun folks are remarkably confused. Running is of course an elite/pro sport, but 98% of people who read and care about running are passionate enthusiasts and these are the people who keep the whole culture afloat. There are no huge races and billions of dollars of shoe sales without those people or a big running magazine. Being a sub elite (or more honestly, fast enough to be almost sub elite) is awesome, but those folks are basically really fast and dedicated amateurs and to think that most runners should worship only performance is quite naive. Running is a lifestyle and a meaningful way to be fit and find community and it changes how millions of people see the world. It's fine to be exclusively interested in the fastest runners but a lot of the best stories involve people who still love to run but aren't that good. The way that so many Letsrun folks have moaned about Runner's World for decades will always make me wince, because it reflects a refusal to accept how the vast majority of people who run look at the world.

Good for him. But "Watermelon Sugar" is still sh!te.

Does it even matter who's on the cover? RW is a very far cry from what it used to be. It's shrunk in size (literally) and importance. It's become a slickly produced advertising pamphlet, featuring the so-called influencers of the day.

I still have a few issues of RUNNER magazine. They had a cover photo of the '83 Fukuoka marathon with Salazar, Seko, the Soh brothers and Juma Ikangaa. Those were the days of real running magazines.

Harry just had a co-starring role from the front row in host Ryan Gosling's opening on SNL.

Harry is hosting next week.

Wait, Runner's World is still in print? I bought my last issue about 15 years ago when they had a photo in the magazine of a famous woman runner using swear words. I was and am done with them! (That is unless they claim to go clean, which I am not expecting)

People associated with a Runner's World edition in Europe just talked on a podcast about how they wanted to put a different picture of him on the cover - and were informed by their parent company in the US that the deal with Harry's PR company didn't allow them to do that since they bought the rights to veto individual nations layout initiative - 16 pages as is, or no deal. That's how "journalism" works these days, I know. It's just like those shelfs in your convenience store that are actually bought and stocked by the product provider, not the actual stores themselves.