The Mags and the Fam

Some time a while back, when I was signing up for a race, I was offered a “free” subscription to various running magazines. All you had to do was cancel within six months, or something like that, and it wouldn’t cost you a penny. So I signed up, and I even went through the motions of canceling within the allotted time. But somehow, whenever I tried to cancel, the magazines would sweeten the pot. They kept offering to give me more issues for free, and so I kept continuing to take them.

And I’m glad I did. I like the running magazines. True, you can only read “10 New Stretches” or “The Top 25 Half Marathons” so many times, but there’s a lot of good stuff in their pages. I just read, for example, a very helpful Runner's World piece about tapering. These mags run good stories about some of the biggest challenges facing a runner: preventing injuries, training , staying strong and motivated .

But there’s one idea that screams out from every issue: These. People. Don’t. Have. Families.

Again and again, the issues talk about ways to improve your strength, PRs, etc. — all assuming that you have infinite time to work on your conditioning. Sometimes they will allow for the possibility that you have a job, and they’ll suggest clever ways to fit in workouts around your office schedule. But, save for the occasional token image of a jog stroller, there seems little thought given to the idea that, just maybe, there are people at home who care more about having you around than whether you’re stretching for 40 minutes before and after every run.

A case in point: this excerpt from the “Editor’s Letter” in the November issue of RW:

I normally don’t make much time for “the other stuff.” But now I get massage therapy every couple of weeks — once a week if my balky hamstring needs it — and ride 30 miles on my road bike. And I’m maniacal about “prehab,” the injury-prevention and cross-training routines that keep you from getting hurt in the first place. I sit in a cold stream or lake after long runs … Every week, I get to at least one yoga class and spend more than an hour on core strength and flexibility.

Wow! I find it hard enough to get in my four runs a week. I can’t even begin to imagine all the cross-training, yoga, and sitting around in cold rivers that the magazines prescribe. I’ve got a six-year old itching to play me in Uno, a five-year old who wants to toss the pigskin in the backyard, a three-year-old asking me to read him a story, and a one-year-old who always wants to be held. I’ve also got a wife who cares to see me every once in a while — and who also likes a little help with the aforementioned youngins’. (Oh yes, I’ve got a job, too.)

I don’t fault the magazine folks. They know who their readers are: diehard runners, and generally the only people who can be diehard about anything are the ones who aren’t distracted by everything else. (Or, maybe the magazine types have such a handle on their personal lives that they have no problem making time for elaborate exercise regimens. For all I know, they are simply more disciplined and thus better equipped to juggle life than I am. They’re probably winning “Parent of the Year” awards alongside their road races.)

Which is great for them, but not necessarily realistic for the rest of us. For me, anyway, the running magazines are a little bit like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie: fun, entertaining, but bearing little resemblance to the reality I inhabit.

I love running, but I’ve got a vocation to tend to. The challenge is balancing the one with the other — and that’s the one challenge the magazines do little to address.