MariahEagle wrote:
SummerSlogger wrote:
Two Words: East Africans
Once the Kenyans and Ethiopians started the complete and total domination of all distance events, road racing, track, XC.. most people stopped paying attention to the top of the sport and just focused on the fitness aspect of it.
Call it whatever ugly name you want, racism, nationalism, xenophobia, but people generally want to follow sports stars that come from their home towns, colleges, states, etc.. When a horde of nameless interchangeable East Africans are all at the top nobody cares any more.
This could explain fan interest in running as a sport.
But I don't think that it explains the change in how people approached being runners. And the apparent magnitude of the change is interesting and perplexing. Regarding numbers, I suppose that it all depends on who you hang out with, and so while I don't quite accept Amby's apparent comment about 70 mpw being "entry level" (or thereabouts), I do think (as someone running at that time) that there is a pretty big difference between what the average newish runner did then versus now. Back then, I think that many more people dove in and got fairly serious immediately, did at least respectable mileage (30, 40, 50-something, and higher, depending on interest in the marathon) and treated races as the hurt fests that most of us think of them as.
Somehow - and perhaps starting in the late 80s or 90s - that seems to have changed pretty dramatically. Maybe it was the advent of charity runs and such. When a race isn't advertised as a race, perhaps it affects how people view it more than we might have realized.
When the focus had been on winning and/or racing well, once that option is removed (east africans), then everyone moves on to your point #2 about it being a charity event.
Once it's just a charity event then there's little if any focus on racing well, training, etc.. it is really a completely different event drawing a very different (but much bigger) crowd.
The good thing about that movement is that it really brought in a huge number of participants. Even if 1/10,000 went on to actually train and try to get faster, really get into the sport, then that is a really good thing. If those same people brought their kids to races and those kids went on to run track or xc, it's a GREAT thing.