KIDS NEED HEROES: A CALL TO INSPIRE
ROAD RACE MANAGEMENT RACE DIRECTOR’S MEETING
HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA - NOVEMBER 8, 2008
KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY TONI REAVIS
Today, running has never been healthier, from the number of events, to the size of fields, to the level of charity fund raising. Yet within that healthy body their exists an overlooked, chronic problem, what Cellcom Green Bay Marathon race director Sean Ryan called the paradigm shift away from competition to participation. Ironic, too, because it was a competition that inspired the fitness movement in the first place, Frank Shorter’s gold medal run at the 1972 Olympic Marathon in Munich. Then with Bill Rodgers’ pied piper performances at the Boston and New York City Marathons from 1975 to 1980 the running movement boomed out across the land. Alberto Salazar and Joan Benoit came next in the early 1980s. But following Joan’s American record at the 1985 Chicago Marathon we had unknowingly hit our apogee. Read more…