Runnerville

According to French scientists, no one will ever again set a world record. According to me, that’s great for the sport. Okay, so French scientists didn’t say it quite like that and I don’t mean exactly what I said, but I needed to get your attention. This is extremely important.

I was recently browsing my website of choice - aljazeera.net - when I came across this article. It states:

Experts from France’s Institute for Biomedical and Epidemiological Research in Sport (IRMES) examined 3,263 world records in track and field, swimming, cycling, speed skating and weightlifting. The records spanned from 1896, when the modern Olympics was revived and accurate timekeeping began, through to 2007. From 1896 to 1968, excluding the two World Wars, when real international competition was impossible, world records were frequently and substantially smashed.

However after 1968, the pace of record-breaking slowed and, in some cases, stopped completely. As an example, Florence Griffith-Joyner’s 10.49 seconds for the women’s 100-metres, set in 1988, remains unchallenged to this day.

In other words, world records will continue to be broken, but by smaller and smaller increments. However, forty years from now, the paper suggests, we will hit a world record ceiling, a ceiling that will require us to change the way we measure times if we want to continue seeing world records.

“It means we can change the unit of measurement to take this into account, for instance using thousandths of a second for the 100m, hundredths of a second for the marathon, or grams for weightlifting, but then we might have to wait for half a century for the record to be broken,” the study’s author suggests.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. I hope you’ve been paying attention. Read more…

I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way…– Whitney Houston, Greatest Love of All

I work part-time at a youth center in my neighborhood. Today, I noticed one of our teens — Fabian, a Hollister-wearing, soccer-loving, girl-chasing teenage boy — looking up Olympics information on the Web. I asked him what he was up to, and he said his teacher had given him an assignment of some kind to gather and report information about various Olympic track & field events, from sprints to middle distance to the marathon. Athletes to watch, records, past results, etc. He didn’t remember all the details of the assignment because he’d forgotten his paper at school, but nevertheless –

I was beaming!

I want to kiss the teacher who gave her students this assignment. The Angel of Track, maybe? I pointed him away from the dead-end site he was looking at and told him to peruse the USATF site for information on the athletes, records, etc. I told him how excited I was that he was doing this project, because track is pretty much the greatest sport in the world. He asked me if I’d help him with his project when he brought his paper back tomorrow, and I answered way too quickly and eagerly. I was like a kid in a candy store.

A few minutes later, I looked over and Fabian was looking up track races on YouTube. I told him to punch in “Michael Johnson” and “1996″, and he was amazed that a human being could run under 10 seconds for the second 100 meters of a 200-meter race. He was hooked.

Whitney might have been right all along. Could it really be that easy?

If you haven’t checked out the feature story on Nike at Forbes.com, do so. Nike provides an interesting case study in choosing leaders who will allow companies and organizations to sell themselves to a broad and diverse audience. That’s exactly what the USATF must do in the wake of CEO Craig Masback’s departure for — who else? — Nike.

Nike decided they needed a “sports guy” (as opposed to a business guy) to take the helm and market to specific sports, not just paste the swoosh everywhere. I believe the USATF needs a “business guy” (or gal) who is not solely concerned about what’s best for the athletes, but wants to market the sport of running to the loads of potential fans out there. One person even suggested hiring the highest-ranking non-future-commissioner of the PGA Tour to come over to the USATF and reproduce its structure (amateur/pro tours) and national exposure. That’s so crazy, it might just work!

A note to the USATF: Please, for the sake of our sport, choose a leader who will think as much about the fans as he/she does about the athletes. Ideally, this would be primarily a business person. If they happen to lace up a pair of running shoes every once in a while, bonus.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to spreading the gospel of our sport will be the un-ghettoization of the running community. Basically, we’ve created little running ghettos that support a conversation meant only for insiders. If we want people “out there” to realize the beauty of our sport and tune in, we’ve got stop being so proud of the exclusivity of our sport and begin to speak to them about it in a language they can understand.

It’s true, if you think about it. Runners and fans of running tend to be so enthralled with their identification in an elite and secretive sub-culture, that they relegate their conversations to insider Web-based communities and running / track clubs only accessible to, well, insiders. Not to knock these communities at all … they serve a great purpose and are a source of inspiration to many. My point here is not to bash the existence of a running sub-culture or the ensuing conversation, but to encourage a broadening of that conversation in order to increase visibility.  (this phenomenon isn’t exclusive to the running community, of course. every specialized group struggles with this)

Questions: How does the conversation broaden? How does change realistically occur within the machine that is running, and what role does Runnerville play in that? How does Runnerville avoid the pitfall of being another insular venue for the running community to talk to itself?

Well?