With the weather turning nicer, it’s time to leave the house. (Please step away from the VCR, and get out there!)
It’s hard to dole out plaudits to Runner’s World May issue. Maybe its simply a matter of bad timing for the Rodale Press monthly, which published its issue perhaps too late to include any relevant stories about the tragic Boston Marathon bombings. Much of RW, which features America’s female long-distance luminaries Kara Goucher and Shalane Flanagan on a fold-out cover, serves as a prep for the big Beantown event. A piece on vanquishing mental running demons is worth a read. Let’s hope RW Editor-in-Chief David Willey explores compelling and heartfelt topics like running in the face of tragedy in its June issue.
Lance Armstrong’s “It’s Not About the Bike,” may be piling up in thrift stores, but Rodale’s Bicycling inspires us to get back in the saddle, even if it’s just to peddle up and down the West Side Highway. This 120-page mag is extremely inviting for newcomers with its “7 Mountain Bike Retreats,” featuring destinations with manicured trails and a lack of hills. While the mag has plenty of photos of $75 spandex shorts to pore over, it also advises that lightweight baggies will do just fine. Editor Peter Flax advocates for helmets better designed to protect against brain damage, making this just our kind of no-nonsense read.
Nothing is more outdoors than the open road. And there is no better way to experience the open road than on a motorcycle. Still, there are better ways to experience motorcycles than in the pages of Cycle World. For such a sexy subject matter — sports bikes — this is one boring read. These machines should be presented in a more alluring fashion with more gloss and color, but Cycle World is muted, both photos and writing. Like a tantalizing dish in a food magazine makes readers hungry, these pictures of Ducatis, BMWs, Kawasakis and Yamahas should get our motors running. CW gets it right with its portrayal of the Yamaha Star Bolt, a stripped-down motorcycle with the retro look that’s hot right now.
Outside’s May issue lures with its exclusive cover story, “Lost on Everest,” but the eyebrow-raising tales don’t stop there. The mag is chock-full of folks who take their bodies and their sports to the extreme — and not in the kids-doing-stunts-on-a-skateboard kind of way. We’re talking adult craziness, like Kilian Jornet, who ran up a mountain in France in less than nine hours. The 15,771-foot Mount Blanc normally takes three days to ascend, Outside explains. The mag, which likes to feature physical freaks like accused murderer and blade runner Oscar Pistorius and long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, is the perfect read for hard-edge New Yorkers who love to stuff themselves on tales of victory over the seemingly impossible. Please. You know who you are.
The New Yorker’s Nicholas Schmidle took heat last year for his article on the raid of Osama bin Laden after a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid disputed key details. This week, he’s going on the offensive, writing that the Serbian government likely fabricated a hoax in claiming that Kosovars had tortured prisoners and set up an organ-trafficking operation in the late 1990s. Schmidle’s aggressive reporting is refreshing. It also stands in sharp contrast to last year’s work, when he admitted that, in reporting his lengthy bin Laden story, he hadn’t actually interviewed any of the SEALs who participated in the mission.
New York must be seething that the New Yorker this week also has a story about people who are breeding half-wild cats and selling them for $30,000. Instead, we’ve got to settle for more humdrum examples of extreme goofball decadence. There’s a photo spread of printed spring shirts, including one from Balenciaga for $925. On the next page, there’s the foodie column that declares rotisserie chicken is “plebian no more,” citing a $44 example as proof. Elsewhere, is it just us, or does New York produce a feature that’s somehow related to “Gossip Girls” at least once a month? This time, it’s about Penn Badgley, who reportedly told his dad, “If you’ve seen 11 episodes, you’ve seen them all.”