What image or concept do you think would likely get people interested or motivated to start running?
What image or concept do you think would likely get people interested or motivated to start running?
money.
I think we need to play to the conservative right. So I say here is the slogan,
Q: WWJD if he knew then what he knows now?
A: RUN
fulfillment
wow....that pic is old school
Caption: Rexing wants a piece of YOU.
yeah...old school...i hope you haven't had that bookmarked for 5 or 6 years...
how about a picture of my fat ass?
that ought to motivate people to run...
oh, yeah, just for one of the above posters, i have a shirt that says this: WWJD4aBJ?
love that shirt
Running: Your Old Man Hates It
That will get a lot of teenagers into it. Unfortunately they know it's bullshit.
It's actually a great question, worthy of more than the usual Letsrun facetiousness.
Here's a possible analogy, although not an obvious one: table tennis. It's the world's second most popular sport, after soccer. It is huge in Asia, obviously, but also in Europe (France, Belgium, but particularly Sweden), the Caribbean, and Africa.
Everywhere but here. There are only about 3-5000 tournament players in the US. About 80% of them go to the U.S. Open and/or U.S. Nationals every year.
So what do you do if you play the world's second most popular sport in a country that just doesn't get it?
Table tennis has begun to do two things: 1) add big money to the mix; and 2) make TV coverage begin to work for, instead of against, the sport.
In the first case, an upstart organization called Killerspin began to hold exhibitions and invitational tournaments in which big money was in play. They added some sizzle to a sport that most Americans still think of as ping-pong, everybody's favorite basement game. The truth is that table tennis at the tournament level is incredibly fun, interesting, and physically challenging; it's also, as far as I can tell, the only sport around where 14 year olds, 26 year olds, 45 year olds, and 70 year olds, of both sexes, play in the same events (since most events are keyed to ratings, not to age, although the age events are certainly important), leading to really interesting cross-generational scenarios in which pre-teen girls sometimes kick 26-year old guy-butt. In any case, Killerspin added money to the mix, and got the best players in the world to show up and play each other in highly public venues. And converts were made.
The second thing American table tennis has done is realize that the old two-fixed-cameras model didn't begin to get at the true demonic nature of the sport, which is Extreme Sport all the way. Table tennis is all about absurd amounts of spin--which makes your own paddle almost leap out of your hand when you go against a player at the 2500+ level--and absurdly quick reflexes, and to watch it the way it use to be broadcast was like watching TV coverage of basketball from the 1940s. Boring! But look how dynamic basketball and football are today--televised, I mean.
Table tennis has begun to come up to speed. The visuals have begun to capture the magic. Table tennis is an extreme sport; kids these days are so good at it because video games have keyed up their reactions....
Anyway, I'm rambling.
Here's my point vis a vis running:
Running--be it sprinting, a track 5K, or a marathon--is an Extreme Sport. Runners know this. But the general populace (i.e., nonrunners) doesn't really get it.
What is needed is TV coverage that begins to get at the magic.
NASCAR might provide a useful example: something really cool happened the moment they put cameras in all the cockpits so that the TV producer could, at will, put you in the shoes of any particular driver.
TV coverage of distance events needs even more innovative camerawork, and should look to NASCAR and the X-Games for examples and possibilities.
Here are a few ideas. Please get me my 10% if they blow up big:
"Running: The Original Extreme Sport." [Neanderthal Man fleeing L to R across screen, followed by saber-toothed tiger....as N. Man flees, his caveman's rags/skins fall away to reveal: Pete Pfitzinger w/beard in Olympic Trials singlet circa early 80s.....or Webb.....]
"Running: Anything Else is Flatlining" [slightly pudgy 13-year old sitting in front of video screen, glazed eyed, somewhat played out....he's playing a game that involves a computer-generated runner awkwardly and unreally striding around a track....suddenly we, along w/kid, have dissolved INTO the game and we're on the track: striding, flowing, panting...suddenly we're Geb, heading off the road, flowing strongly, powerfully, and when we gaze slighly upward--like plane pilot looking at controls--we see "heart rate" and "lactate" on meters that are surging up, pegging...]
