Running craze of the 70's ; what caused it? can it be re done?

What impressed me most about the 70's boom was the way a relative "nobody" could rise to elite status on the roads. Bill Rodgers and Patty Lyons exemplified this. Joan Benoit Samuelson -- who played field hockey -- did too. And at the Masters level we marveled at John Campbell and Priscilla Welch.

They taught the Average Joe and Jane that by putting in the effort, you could become pretty damn fast. To his credit, the UK's Steve Way is a throwback to that great running era -

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/may/31/great-britain-commonwealth-games-marathon-steve-way

10 years and you guys never figured it out. The 70s boon was pre-Jogbra. The jogbra was invented in the late 70s.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6460714

In all seriousness--and sorry if this point has already been touched on--most of the top runners were white, and it was relatively easy for casual sports fans to distinguish the relatively few men of color and see them (and the white guys) as individuals. Now you'll see six or eight black guys, all wearing identical uniforms--the average (white) sports fan in the West can't/won't cope.

Bottom line: think that *participation) can and will continue (and increase), But in terms of fandom--an actual "craze"--train go sorry.

thjhst wrote:

In all seriousness--and sorry if this point has already been touched on--most of the top runners were white, and it was relatively easy for casual sports fans to distinguish the relatively few men of color and see them (and the white guys) as individuals. Now you'll see six or eight black guys, all wearing identical uniforms--the average (white) sports fan in the West can't/won't cope.

Bottom line: think that *participation) can and will continue (and increase), But in terms of fandom--an actual "craze"--train go sorry.

There's a degree of truth to that, but I think if we had an American born black athlete became a great miler, or marathoner etc.. I think the public would be just as open to him as other track athletes.

It's not PC, but the East African dominance has been detrimental to overall public interest. But I don't think it's racism as much as the fact that they are foreign and often don't speak but broken English. It makes it really hard to trot one of those guys out to do promo work for a race, or sell shoes.

"holy cow," "it's deja vu all over again!"

I'm waiting for Pattie and Bill (and all the others) to reply.

How in hell did the OP find this thread???

I'd say the 1972 Olympics started the craze. There were a lot of Americans who did well in the running events.

Days only had 24 hours then, same as now. Weeks had seven days. We didn't have more time to train. We trained more with the time we had. I can think of 10 guys in my old club who routinely ran 100 or more miles a week. Two were grad students, the other eight all worked full time.

Spider wrote:

It was a combination of factors that merged by chance. I was a schoolboy runner then, but here goes"

Sounds good to me. I'd add:

The federation has no interest in mass participation, so promoting participants in the sport is left to no one in particular.

Combine this with something going on with parenting. Kid time is extremely structured now. Since the federation has nothing and no interest in providing a structured place for kids to run anywhere, the kids play a ball sport of some kind, maybe rugby, and the running coach is three other kinds of coaches too.

Runners were in uncharted territory. No one had run 100+ mile weeks before. It was a new frontier.

I agree with Mr. Doritos, but I'll address several points as well. Time is far too scarce today. A guy working "full time" is very likely to be putting in 60+ hours per week, not 40. And that's just his job; it says nothing of additional hours for social life (including kids) -- so most people will either have to sacrifice time for fitness or sacrifice sleep to get good at or develop a passion for running, either choice being a recipe for making it more difficult to see fast times from 'regular joes' today.

Getting down to the nitty-gritty, not many people can go sub-2:30 in a marathon with less than 90+ miles per week, let alone less than 70. It's pretty damn difficult to hit those numbers without doubles, and most people just don't have time for doubles these days.

In general, you have more sedentary jobs today, so there's tons of lost fitness there. I mean seriously, if your resting metabolic rate increases significantly just from standing as opposed to sitting, how much harder is it for the sedentary guy to hit the same fitness goals as the guy with an 'active' job (e.g. package-delivery boy, line-cook, whatever). Even within big corporations, 'professionals' don't have to walk as much -- You can communicate so much more easily by sitting at your computer or in front of your phone or other smart device. So there's no reason to walk to a meeting in a different room, you just video conference. You don't have to physically deliver the specs to the other engineers, you just email them, etc., etc.

Diet also plays a huge role. The average restaurant meal has increased in portion-size. The average snack is going to have more sugar, or sugar more sneakily hidden. You have a greater prevalence foods with artificial or processed ingredients today, unless you actively go outside that and hop on a movement of some sort (natural, organic, non-GMO, vegan, or whatever your fancy), which is economically prohibitive for many 'average joes.'

So when you add all these things up, the hill that one has to climb to get to a good level of fitness is steeper than it was in the '70's, and that makes it more difficult to breed passion as well.

The "it takes a village" and "team" movements of the 1990's and all years since really made it harder for the running boom to return as well. Running / track & field is an individual sport, but how many care about that when we are constantly reminded that we 'need' lots of people helping us, or that we need to work as a team, work on our team spirit, be a part of a 'community,' be 'social-'ly connected, and to 'share' ??? The pride of individual accomplishment has been so diminished that it's hard to re-birth a movement that relies on an individual pushing himself. So only team-sports get much thought.

And the media isn't helping. While the national championships in track and field were happening, my local news stations' top sports story was a high school lacrosse match. Other b*s* made it stories #2, 3, and 4, and track was never mentioned. During the 2013 World's, I remember the sportscaster remarking that it was a "slow" sports day. WTF?!

I think you hit on a major difference between running in the 70s and running today. Time is always scarce. It is now and it was then but here's a big difference. Those of us who ran seriously back then knew that we wanted to keep doing it and understood that we needed to set our lives up in ways that allowed us to keep running once we were out of school and that was a MAJOR factor when it came time to look for work.

I knew when I started college that I wanted to continue running when I was done so I decided to major in education because a teaching job meant I'd have the same schedule as a worker as I'd had as a student. Ron Hill made sure he lived within 7 miles of his job so he could run back and forth to work. Others that I knew would pass up certain jobs or promotions because the job wouldn't allow them time to train enough. Yes, time absolutely is scarce so you'd better think carefully about what you allot it to.

And jobs in the 70s were about as sedentary as now. Of those ten 100 or more mile a week guys I mentioned, one was a construction worker for a while but eventually opened a running shop. Everyone else had a desk job or taught.

I think a big difference between now and then was that we looked to our jobs as a means of supporting our lives and the things we wanted to do with our lives which at the time included, but was not limited to, serious running. We were runners who taught, or who had a government job, or who was a statistician, or who was a technical writer. Today the job seems to be the main thing for runners and running takes a back seat.

By what metric is the running craze over? More people are running today, and elites are performing better than in the '70s (yes, that's '70s, not 70's...it's plural, not possessive). With the way people talk, you'd think all the national records were set by 1979 and no one had touched those records since. Obviously not the case.

Bump.

Population of runners wrote:

craze of the 70's ; what caused it? can it be redone?

I'm confused. What specific aspect of the craze are you trying to redo?

I would say the running scenes in, "Rocky"

Most people did not know who Shorter or Rodgers were. But they saw Rocky getting out of bed at 5 to go run in downtown Philly.

It sounds trite, but Rocky won best picture, and was extremely popular.

This from the perspective of a young person in the 70s who consumed a lot of media (i,e I watched a lot of TV)

I remember those times well. Running was seen as both counter-cultural (which made it cool) and patriotic which made Shorter and Rodgers household names due to heightened media exposure. On the counter-cultural side, it was still fashionable amongst young people to engage in a journey of self-discovery and actualization, but w/o the baggage of drugs, and the "naturalness" of running and pushing one's limits fit in perfectly w/that idea. I remember constantly hearing about the "runner's high" back then.

On the patriotic side, Shorter has stated that he was inspired by Gerry Lindgren winning the 10,000m at 1964's US-USSR track meet in L.A. (during the height of the Cold War) which may have been the first time an American had beaten a Russian in that distance. People slam on Lindgren all the time but fail to realize how important his victory at that meet was for the future popularity of running.

1. Americans were the best

2. Boston existed

3. Emaciation was in

This. Nobody wants to look like a skeleton, which is what you need to be really fast. A BMI of 20 or less is a requirement. Thing is, if you look like that, you pretty much have to resign yourself to a life of celebacy/virginity. Only the top 0.1% or so of men in looks get laid today, and you need to be absolutely jacked to be among them. So you can be a runner if you are virgin incel or gay, but not if you want to have sex with women. That's the harsh reality. Now let's see some coping and seething!