If the New York City Marathon’s one-year Sandy gap has left you with pent-up anticipation, race out for these top four running mags.
Runner’s World stumbles out of the gate in addressing the post-Sandy marathon. The Rodale Inc. fitness publication treats New York Road Runner CEO Mary Wittenberg with nary a critical eye. Instead, the glossy offers the overseer of one of the world’s most prominent road races a powder puff Q&A. She fails to apologize for being tone-deaf and trying to hold the marathon despite Sandy’s devastation. “We went really quiet in a way that’s not like us . . ,” is the closest readers get to a meaningful statement from the NYRR head. An article about elite American long distance runner Ryan Hall, penned by John Brant, can be simply summed up by noting that Hall’s a solid American runner whose dreams of greatness have been tripped up by injuries — and those pesky East African superstars.
Runner’s World should watch its back. Sister Rodale Inc. publication Running Times is hot on its tail. That’s if RT can continue to produce compelling articles. While RW’s seems to pander to a broad swath of mostly novice runners and generally sticks to a boilerplate format, RT finds its sweet spot in offering useful training and nutritional tips. Led by Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Beverly, RT also delivers insightful features about runners of all stripes. Take one essay on a high school running team in Anchorage. Phil Latter writes that the Alaskan team overcomes training in sub-zero weather, on sometimes treacherous terrain, to produce champions. An item titled “Masterminding the Marathon” does a solid job synthesizing advice from taper to recovery.
Forget running a marathon. Plodding through the pages of Marathon & Beyond is enough to test your endurance. The glossy bi-monthly, geared toward masochistic runners who turn up their noses at road races under 30 miles, boasts articles averaging 15 or 20 pages. Most of the pieces read like the sort of breathless Ph.D.-level blather you’d find in the Journal of the American Medical Association — ill-suited for lay runners. We get that ultra-runners are not your average folk, but someone ought to tell Editor Richard Benyo that readers could use some brevity here and there.
Triathlete should be read with a jaundiced eye. The Competitor Group specialty fitness publication constantly seems to be shilling products for some company or another. It’s hard to tell what’s an ad and what’s just cockamamie biased reporting. An item titled “How to Get to the Podium in 2013” promotes EnduraFuel and EPO-Boost until you realize it’s a blatant advertisement. Readers shouldn’t be faulted for confusing ads for genuine articles because the magazine also offers a piece, “The New Fuel Rule” on health company First Endurance, which essentially serves as free marketing. We understand that these are tough times for magazines … but geez.
The New Yorker’s Food Issue provides a contemptible discussion of the latest contemptible foodie fancy: horse eating. Why on earth does the US resist horse meat, a chorus of sheep-headed chefs wants to know. The article dutifully notes that horses have long been used for “transportation” and “companionship” and “war.” It’s too preoccupied with how the Europeans and Japanese love it to notice that Americans may for once be right: to eat this noble creature, long a touchstone of freedom, virtue and enterprise in our history, would be a common travesty.
Meanwhile, every issue of New York is, of course, to some extent a food issue. In addition to an annoying article on juicing, we get a profile of a 25-year-old Silicon Valley brat who is annoyed by the fact that he has to eat. “I remember when I was very young, eating lettuce and thinking it was very weird to be eating leaves,” says Rob Rhinehart, who says he would rather be spending the precious minutes of his day in front of a computer screen. His solution is a reportedly foul-tasting powder he calls “Soylent.” Named for the human cannibal paste from the 1973 Charlton Heston flick, Soylent has obtained $100,000 in venture capital backing.
Time runs an incredibly boring cover story on Prince Charles. On one hand, we learn of actress Emma Thompson’s claim that dancing with the prince is “better than sex.” So why does the rest of this lengthy account plod on in such sexless fashion like his dismal marriage with Diana? “A former girlfriend remembers their heads bumping as he moved to kiss her while she curtseyed,” the magazine reports, while politely eliding the now-legendary tale of the tampon. So skip the snoozy story on his charity work and check out the 1974 photo of the prince exposing his torso while doffing a polo shirt.