Innehållsförteckning för Issue 1 2024 från Runner's World

DISPATCHES Deviant Cookies Team PAUL AND I were having brunch with friends, talking about upcoming travel plans, when he mentioned that we were flying to Berlin in September so I could race the marathon. Naturally, the conversation shifted to running. As we chatted about dessert flavored gels, running through NYC’s boroughs, and the 20-mile-long run, someone asked, “Has Paul ever raced with you?” I shot my partner an incriminating look as he offered back a pained smile. BACK IN NOVEMBER 2022, I was shopping for a half marathon when Paul, who’d never run a road race, said he’d enter the Love Run Philadelphia Half Marathon with me. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Finally, I thought, he’ll understand why I’m crazy about running. Before he registered, I made…

NEIL WALLACK STOOD at the corner of Hereford and Boylston Street, the final turn of the Boston Marathon. Three of his runners had come through, 12 to go. A loud boom shattered Wallack’s concentration. Runners fell to their knees, smoke filled the air, and people began to scream. Another boom. Wallack realized they were bombs. He ran to the Marriott at Copley Place, where he’d rented a suite for marathon weekend. As a coach for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) charity team, Wallack wanted his runners to have a place to celebrate after the race. But the mood in 2013 was somber: The bombs killed three people and injured hundreds. Fortunately, each of the 15 JDRF runners returned unharmed. Every one of them came back to race in 2014,…

Every shoe in this guide had to fight for its life. As established brands release models that are faster and bouncier than ever—and newcomers enter the market with impressive debut running models—it’s never been tougher for a pair to land on these pages. We considered more than 120 different models across 36 different brands for a spot on this list. Our RW staff and wear-test team of nearly 300 runners evaluated each of these shoes after at least 100 miles of running. In making our selections, we also consulted the data collected from our Shoe Lab, with special attention to qualities like cushioning, stability, flexibility, and overall ride. Most important, we focused on both the shoe’s performance and comfort in a variety of environments from the track to trails, and…

DISPATCHES Grief Friends Peace WE MEET IN the woods at the entrance of the trail. My childhood friend, former teammate, and first running partner, Holly Serrao, is visiting her family in eastern Pennsylvania, and we’ve carved out some time for running on this Sunday morning. I arrive a few minutes before she does, so I’m alone with my father’s memorial bench, where Holly requested we meet so she can pay tribute. This is where I told my dad, during our last trip home from the hospital when all options had been exhausted, that I wanted to place a memorial for him—the spot where, in another life when he was rosy-cheeked, he and I often met for walks and, later, as he gradually lost his strength, we meandered along the shaded…

DISPATCHES Disney Journey Experience I ONCE ASKED some of my Runner’s World coworkers what was the fastest mile they ever ran. One of them said they ran somewhere in the 4-minute range, but that was back in high school. When I was in high school, I was known for a few things: getting involved in every theater production, singing in the TartanTones (the school choir), and being the first person at lacrosse practice. Initially, my coach was impressed with my eagerness, but soon she realized the real reason for my punctuality: I would get there early to put on all my goalie equipment, which then couldn’t possibly be taken off in time for me to run the pre-practice mile. In high school, I hated running. And sometimes, I still do.…

11 RUNNING HEROES WHO CHANNEL THE POWER OF EVERY STRIDE TOWARD CAUSES THAT DON’T HAVE A FINISH LINE. if running were solely about racing, many of us would have quit long ago—and missed out on its extraordinary ability to transform lives. You already know how running makes you feel: strong, limitless, full of energy. But there’s something else about running, something less tangible yet indisputably real: the way it inspires many of us to harness its power for a greater good. ¶ In a sport where so much attention is focused on the highest achievers—track phenoms, record setters, Olympic champions—sometimes this fundamental truth about running gets overlooked. At Runner’s World we believe in celebrating all runners, including those who are less visible but whose achievements are just as profound. ¶…

“IT’S ALL ABOUT PUTTING OUR FLAG DOWN TO LET THE NEIGHBORHOOD KNOW THAT NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AND WHAT ADVERSITY WE FACE, WE’RE HERE TO STAY. TEN YEARS AGO, Hector Espinal, now 32, had just been through a bad breakup and was feeling lonely and depressed. He started running, and it helped, but something was still missing. “I didn’t know what I was looking for,” Espinal says. “I just needed people—I needed something different from anything that I had ever done, and I couldn’t find that.” So Espinal, now a four-time marathoner who works in marketing by day, took to social media, sharing his location on Instagram posts to invite people to join him on his runs. It took a while to gain momentum, but he was determined. “If no…

“THE MORE WOMEN ARE ABLE TO ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND THEIR BODIES, THE BETTER EQUIPPED THEY’RE GOING TO BE IN LIFE. IN 2020, MARY Cain, the former mid-distance teenage phenom, had an idea. She thought about everything she hadn’t had when she was competing professionally—support, consistent mentorship, a sense of safety—and decided that no girl in sports should have to go through what she did. The year before, she had blown the whistle on the Nike Oregon Project, describing a culture of body-shaming and psychological abuse that led to severe depression, and even suicidal thoughts until she left in 2016. Beyond her own experience, there was also “a big reckoning,” as Cain puts it, happening in track and field at the time, with people beginning to ask, “How inclusive are we, really,…

IN 2012, JUAN Antonio-Sorto took up running to help counteract stress—he was working full-time while getting his PhD in Urban Planning and Environmental Policy from Texas Southern University. “I started running with a group of other graduate students,” he says. “It helped clear my mind.” When a friend suggested training for a marathon, he agreed, and completed the Houston Marathon in 2016. Before long he had caught the triathlon bug and eventually finished an Ironman in 2017. “That year I had also lost 40 pounds because I changed my eating habits,” he says. • I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN HELPING OTHERS, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO DO NOT HAVE THE MEANS TO ACCOMPLISH THEIR GOALS. After experiencing such significant personal success through running, Sorto found his priorities shifting. “I grew up in…

ALTRAFWD EXPERIENCE Price: $140 / Weight: 8.3 oz (M), 6.7 oz (W) /Drop: 6.8 mm (M), 5.4 mm (W) ALTRA BUILT ITS first zero-drop shoe back in 2009 using a toaster oven and a hacksaw. Ever since, the brand’s creed has encouraged natural foot alignment with a wide toebox and that same zeromillimeter offset. Now, Altra has finally released a non-zero-drop model. Though it’s spec’d at 4mm—that’s little more than the thickness of two stacked nickels—it marks a significant shift for the company. Altra has evolved much over the years, especially after VF Corporation acquired the brand in 2018, spurring the switch from “zero drop” to “balanced cushioning” terminology. The former sounded like it was too closely associated with minimalism. That same year, Kara Goucher signed on as a sponsored…

with Courtney Dauwalter, who had one of the most legendary years in trail-running history in 2023, becoming the first person to win the Triple Crown of 100-mile races in a single season. THIS ←OR→ THAT Uphill ← Downhill Altitude ← Humidity Long Shorts1 ← Short Shorts Race → Training Start ← Finish Wave ← Nod Group → Solo Loops2 ← Out-and-Backs Cross-Train → Day Off Sun ← Shade Race Plan → Intuition Snack ← Meal Early Morning3 ← Late Night Hat → Sunglasses PR → FKT Rain → Snow Pants ← Tights Smile4 ← Grimace Patience ← Push Chatting → Silence Zoning Out → Dialing In5 Caffeine → Adrenaline LET ME EXPLAIN (1) Comfort is key! I prefer [shorts with] long inseams because I am most comfortable in them. We…

DISPATCHES Repeats Chunking Goals UP. TAP THE pole. Down. Tap the Bridge. Up. Tap. Down.… Over the weekend, on one of many hill-repeat sessions, I came to the realization that the majority of my training for a 200-mile trail race through big mountain terrain has been on a single mile. It’s not even a trail, and, in fact, some of it is even paved. How can I possibly prepare for such a big goal on such seemingly wildly inappropriate training grounds? There was a time when I could go out on any given weeknight and run for three or four hours. But: life. Now I find myself having to balance running with family obligations, keeping a new dog from chewing up all my shoelaces, and doing work on a new…

DISPATCHES Drills Biomechanics Embarrassed WHEN I FIRST moved to my small Pennsylvania city two years ago, I naturally scoped out the training basics: a greenway for long runs and tempos, dirt trails for easy days, a track, and—to be used most frequently—a flat patch of grass or road at least 100 meters long within a block or two of my house. That last one might sound unnecessarily specific. I was looking for a spot where I could run “strides.” Strides (never “striders”) are an imperative part of my year-round training, no matter what distance I’m targeting. After easy runs, I do four to eight strides, somewhere around 5K pace, taking enough time between each one to get my heart rate back down. They’re faster than my normal running pace, but…

“HE DISCOVERED THAT HIS RUNNING COULD BE MORE MEANINGFUL WHEN IT BECAME A VEHICLE FOR CHANGE. HALFWAY THROUGH DAY four of the Jungle Ultra—a 230km self-supported multi-stage ultramarathon through the Amazon rainforest in western Peru—Aum Gandhi’s face started to feel fuzzy. With 13km of the jungle canopy left to run, Gandhi decided he would take a breather at the next checkpoint. There he sat with medics, concentrating on getting salt and water into his system, fending off the symptoms of heat exhaustion. The sticky air in Manu National Park, which makes up a small chunk of the rainforest, can be suffocating. As Gandhi weighed his options—keep shuffling with his 30-pound backpack or drop out and return to camp—he was distracted by the swarming insects, seemingly immune to the DEET repellent…

She stunned the world (and herself) with Olympic bronze in Tokyo. Then life went sideways. How America’s unexpected marathon phenom is getting her body—and brain—back on track. ON A CLEAR DECEMBER night in 2019, Molly Seidel was at a rooftop holiday party in Boston, wearing a black velvet dress, doing what a lot of 25-year-olds do: passing a joint between friends, wondering what she was doing with her life. “You should run the Olympic Trials,” her sister, Izzy, said, as smoke swirled in the chilly air atop The Trackhouse, a retail shop and community hub on Newbury Street operated by the running brand Tracksmith. “That would be hilarious if you did that as your first marathon.” Molly, an elite 10K racer who’d spent much of 2019 injured, looked out at the…

NIKE ZOOMX ULTRAFLY TRAIL Price: $260 / Weight: 9.9 oz (M), 8.3 oz (W) /Drop: 10.5 mm (M), 7.8 mm (W) DESIGNED FOR THE Western States Endurance Run’s 100-mile course, the Ultrafly leverages the latest tech to help you rip it on race day. Starting with the ZoomX foam, it’s thinner than Nike’s road racers and has been wrapped in fabric. That combination makes the Ultrafly more stable on uneven terrain because the squishy foam can’t compress quite as much. The fabric boosts durability, too, so that the fragile foam isn’t shredded quickly by trail debris. The lower stack height also makes the midsole less tippy on top of rocks and roots. Embedded within it is a three-quarter length carbon-fiber plate that’s notched and flexes laterally. Even so, feedback was…