Runner's World sucks because...

Oh yeah, coming on letsrun and seeing 15 "hottest runner" threads is much better. Face it, runners, as a group, are their own worst enemy.

its better than what to do with quinoa that's for sure.

Here's mine.

Dean Karno on the front cover - oiled up.

VM wrote:

Oh yeah, coming on letsrun and seeing 15 "hottest runner" threads is much better. Face it, runners, as a group, are their own worst enemy.

doesn't cost $5 to look at that though. I agree I haven't seen anything substantial from runner's world in a long time. Obviousely they need to hire younger or more creative talent. I am sure hundreds of people could write workout ideas (ie:Hadd, etc).

Disagree on the younger talent. I think they need to hire back some of the older talent that remembers what Runner's World was like when it actually covered serious runners/issues.

SWEDES wrote:

Disagree on the younger talent. I think they need to hire back some of the older talent that remembers what Runner's World was like when it actually covered serious runners/issues.

Disagree. I think everyone looking to RW for nothing but info for the elite or even competitive runner needs to realize that the magazine underwent an intentional format change some years ago in an effort to attract more subscribers and therefore more and bigger advertisers. Rodale Press and RW are considered publishing darlings in recent years because of their growth in ad pages.

We all know that RW is in it for the ad revenue, however, many of us couldn't care less about that. We want a magazine with some substance, right now it stinks. Why can't running be covered like Cyclesport covers cycling? I know I would spend the extra money for a magazine like that.

it's all about ad dollars and so in order to increase subscriptions, they put up glossy pics with shiny runners photgraphed by professionals. everything is neat, tidy, and quaint to get the dotcomer in the supermarket with the black-rimmed glasses and the blackberry to see the pretty people and the endless 'first marathon success plan' articles as well as that vital recipe for quinoa. does it balance out running times? yes. is it a pretty rag with about 1 relevant article. i say yes. it's American flash with no running bang for the masses of cattle with disposable income that bring in the ad dollars to help furnish the publisher's beach house.

WOW!!!!!!

This is a really original subject for a thread! I can't remember a time where this was mentioned around here.

Please share how you came up with this original thought.

Sitting on the sh-tter, turning the page and seeing that quinoa is an Andean food that I can find it in the bulk food section of a local market. Then thinking that this magazine is horrid and wishing that pretty pics and quinoa recipe space in a running mag could better be used to really dig into the sport and science of running. You know, give us a little more substance? Be a running mag. Is it new on this b-board? Nope. Do I have the right to post it on letsrun? Yep. Did you just waste time writing your reply? Up to you. One thing's for sure, you didn't help bury this thread by posting your comment. You added another number to the box and bumped us up to the top. Thanks!

it appeared in my head after the boost of protein from the fried quinoa

Their circulation is something like 650,000, which obviously means they can't just serve the interests of the people on this message board. But there have been very comprehensive articles in recent months on people like Meb Keflezighi, Deena Kastor, Galen Rupp, and Gerry Lindgren. Isn't that what you want?

Ok everybody why don't we think about this for a second. You start a magazine. You want to make money with this magazine. You realize that when you skim over the results at most major marathons and other races 90+ % of the runners are slow. They are not serious runners they run to lose weight, stay in relatively good shape, complete a marathon, etc. So now do you make a magazine that caters to that 90% or to the 10 or even really just 1% of serious runners out there? You don't like runner's world? Well I have a simple solution, don't buy it! It isn't geared toward the more serious runners plus do yu really need that much advice on training?

Times have changed. Old school running magazines were geared toward serious runners because that's really all that existed back then. Now the majority of runners are rec joggers. Look at how marathons have changed over time, then look at how slow the average times have gotten, and this is even with the winners running a lot faster than in the past.

If I wanted to make money I would do exactly what runner's world is doing. It's a great idea.

right on! moneky boy

R

I agree that most of RW is garbage, and often rotting garbage because of a lack of any coherent editorial policy - which leads to conflicting advice week-to-week on miles, shoes, food, speed and even things that have nothing to do with running. I feel sorry for subscribers who can't make their own decisions, they must be changing shoes, diets and training plans every month.

However - lately I have been finding some nuggets well worth reading. Cases in point: Kenny Moore's Bowerman excerpt in the December issue, and recent profiles on Meb, Deena and Paula.

the elite should also realise that if it wasn't for these slow runners there wouldn't be sponsorship for athletes etc

some good points. sadly though, its all about the bucks which runs against the spirit of running. for the comments about elites, i find some of the ads and articles designed for different elites...those with disposable income to buy half the useless, marked-up crap in the magazine.

They had an excellent article on marathon training this month.

Sure, it was a condensed and watered down (how is it possible for it to be both simultaneaously?) version of a good program, but at least it looks like it gets the basic elements right.

Their website has good interviews pretty often.

oil me up for my photo wrote:

Sitting on the sh-tter, turning the page and seeing that quinoa is an Andean food that I can find it in the bulk food section of a local market. Then thinking that this magazine is horrid and wishing that pretty pics and quinoa recipe space in a running mag could better be used to really dig into the sport and science of running. You know, give us a little more substance? Be a running mag. Is it new on this b-board? Nope. Do I have the right to post it on letsrun? Yep. Did you just waste time writing your reply? Up to you. One thing's for sure, you didn't help bury this thread by posting your comment. You added another number to the box and bumped us up to the top. Thanks!

Hahaha. And what else is RW good for when on the shitter? :) I agree it sucks. The worst part of it is that millions of runnerwannabees see this rag as a guide. They are influenced by it. RW is partly responsible for North American running mediocrity. All nice and glossy without a hair out of place, eating yogurt, wearing perfect singlets, galloway spewing forth things that I learned as a 5 year old and disguising them as new discoveries in running, crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagues by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...