The Tale's In The Race

The news media rarely gives decent coverage of our favourite sport. The only reasonable coverage I’ve seen was part of a large event such as the Summer Olympics, the Commonwealth Games or the Boston Marathon. Even then, the focus is on the shorter, track-centric contests, relegating longer races, such as the marathon, to a few moments of cut-a-ways between shorter events. Rarely is the whole race covered properly from start to finish with an appropriate level of insightful analysis and commentary.

When big media mentions a local event or race, you are lucky if it gets a mention, unless it’s a major charity event. They usually manage to get the winner’s times and names correct, but even if it is covered, it’s usually at the tail end of a news cast or at the bottom of a column at the back of the sports pages. Even this year’s "Around the Bay" coverage by the Hamilton Spectator was dismal compared to previous years.

If, by chance, you get an interview with the winner, it will only be a sentence or two long. You can guarantee that it will also include one or more of the usual catch phrases with a comment about the wind, the heat or cold and the hills. If there’s a photo, there’s a 50/50 chance that the standard finish line photo of the leaders is either reduced in size or bumped to prominently feature a picture of some runner in a goofy hat or outfit.

All the effort of putting together a race and completing the course is reduced to 20 seconds of on-air time or a few inches of print buried on the back page, if it gets mentioned at all.

For most race events in our communities you are extremely lucky to get a reporter out to the race. Most of the time the only way to get any coverage in the papers is to fax or email in the results. That way they get all of the facts but none of the passion. This strikes me as lazy reporting. The sports desk staff acts like a low status stringer, by taking the easy way out. For a race with 500 runners, there are 500 different stories waiting to be told. There are stories about personal challenges, great defeats, amazing come backs, desire, dedication and perseverance. These stories are as much about the journey to the start line as the completion of the race itself.

Runners World and other similar publications are also guilty of over simplification. How many of you have dropped a subscription or stopped purchasing a specific sport based magazine because you got tired of reading the same rehashed articles over and over again. "Hydration Tips From The Experts", "Beginners: Easy Ways To Speed Up", "Burn More Calories", "Less Fat, More Energy", "Run Better Right Now" are all taken directly from recent covers. Maybe this is good information for runners new to the sport, but these articles are not what I’d call in-depth coverage. How many times can you write about plantar fasciitus, track work outs or meal plans before it’s done to death? Let’s face it, most of these publications are the running shoe set’s version of Vogue, all about image and fashion. In other words, all fluff and no stuff.

Magazine covers are another pet peeve of mine. Rarely to do you see the guts and glory of running portrayed on the front. Usually, you get and an idealized photograph of some perfectly posed, half naked jogging Barbie or Ken, running against a travel brochure background, all slick and air brushed for maximum eye candy appeal. When have you ever seen someone look like the image portrayed on those covers? No real runner out on a real run looks that good, not even Joe " Hollywood" Hewitt. What I want to see are real runners, running on real roads and trails. I want to see race photos that capture the sweat and effort of the race. I want to see pictures from trail races where you can hardly see the runners for the mud. I want to see the joy of participation. What I want to see is the honesty of running, not some tarted up marketing exec’s idea of what running is all about.

The media isn’t happy with just showing us the winners in the running game. That’s a very small market share and a small market makes it hard to sell expensive advertising space. The best way to widen that target audience and emphasize the highs is to use a contrast, the biggest one possible. So, is it the average runner we see portrayed to us within those covers? Nope, it’s either the elite of the world or the penguin brigade. Please don’t misunderstand my point on this topic, I’m not complaining about new runners or people that use running as part of an active life style to become healthier, fitter human beings. No, what I’m bothered by is the media’s focus on telling only the two stories, completely missing the experiences of the bulk of people out there who are also doing it. Just as most of the running community will never win a race and most of us will never finish last, the average runner is squarely in the mid-pack. I just wish the media would drop the extreme freak show image they tend to use when portraying runners.

I’m not even going to get started on the cult of celebrity that some publications seem to pander to. Did you really care that former President Clinton and Madonna are runners? Puleeze! ‘Nuff said?

Part of the fun of socializing with other runners and participating in races is the experiences we get from them. I often think that the best part of the race happens after you cross the finish line. Telling the tale of the race is a common bond that allows runners of all abilities to share the experience. Those stories of triumph and defeat, humour and sorrow inspire others. Many runners in turn have been inspired to run a race simply by the retelling of another runner’s experience.

Some of us run to collect the hardware at the end, some run to see how far they can push themselves and some run for the experiences the journey brings us. All those runners will wait for the starting gun and complete the same course, but all will have a separate story to tell of that race. The race director, the volunteers, the police and support crew also have a different experience of the same event. The collective experience of all, not the individual, is the true story arc of the race and that can never be easily be captured by a single reporter or camera.

A race is an exclamation mark that punctuates our weekly training schedules. It can be used as a reason for running, a goal and focus for our training or a way of celebrating the passing of yet another season. It does not matter if the moment is captured by an outside observer or by the individual. Running and racing is a personal experience that becomes a page or chapter in the participant’s life story. Most runners know this and strive to add a myriad of tales to their personal books. I only wish the media as a whole would dig a little bit deeper and share those tales with rest of the world.

By Mark G. Collis

Revised: June 21, 2006.