The Tether: FRONT AND CENTER, Dude

The Tether 10/06/19

Coach Sarah and Coach MK will be in Atlanta this weekend! Join us for a run ! If you can't, mark your calendars for #3DATF !

I, Coach MK, am from football country. Fridays were high school football, Saturdays we cheered for the Volunteers, and Sundays we did the best we could until NASCAR started ( my state wouldn't get a pro team until I left for college). My parents were never happier than when we were together as a family at Neyland Stadium, cheering for Andy Kelly, then Heath Shuler, then a certain freshman named Peyton Manning whose BFF would go on to be famous, too.

When we were not at the stadium, my father would watch the games on television while listening to live commentary on two radio stations, simultaneously. He would consume post-game shows both on tv and radio for the rest of the weekend. He subscribes to more football-related cable channels than any human can possibly watch.

I tell you that to tell you this: my father is neither dinosaur nor anomaly. For better or worse, people who fall in love with a sport want ALL OF THE SPORT which can be hard to understand if you didn't grow up with it and think of rabid fans to be guys like this (btw, Patton Oswalt is AMAZING in this movie). Sports, in general, are a GIGANTIC industry thanks to fans like my dad whose demand for content cannot be overstated much less met.

Sports executives KNOW this. T hey care a lot about the fan experience; e ngagement is paramount. The player experience matters too, but the business itself is all about the fans.

This week I am stuck on the incredible importance of two stories that highlight the deep-seeded issues in my (much-smaller, infrastructure-lacking) sport which manages to cultivate die-hard fans in spite of itself: distance running.

If you are into podcasts, give this one with Malcolm Gladwell a listen.

The first, is the World Championships in Doha. TLDR; The season should be over, and Doha is HOT. Even in October. Even at midnight. T hey promised there would be no empty seats. They wuz wrong, ya'all.

The decision to delay the World Championships so they could be held in Doha matters for reasons you can read here. Arguably, neither fans nor athletes were considered in this decision, which was unfair to both. The stories are crushing.

Why does this happen? It's complicated. The short answer is infrastructure. Distance running is a (mostly) individual sport, a community movement that has grown into a business; its governing bodies are nonprofits but each race is its own business or nonprofit. "Going pro" in running (or any area of T&F) is far less lucrative than going pro in any league sport; at the pro level each runner is its own business.

The sport is completely disconnected from the athletes as well as the fans. The pipeline is broken.

Most of the athletes in Doha right now have full-time jobs .

The second story, is the treatment of two athlete/influencers at the Berlin Marathon. Martinus and Latoya shared their experiences both on their I nstagrams and on their podcast, 300 Pounds and Running. If you haven't yet, you need to hear the latest, " Do Better Berlin." It's jaw-dropping. I don't want to race Berlin after hearing that. I'll save my money for Amsterdam.

I've always said that distance running is the most egalitarian sport in the world, the sport a person can pick up later in life, and dominate. It's not uncommon for fans to morph into my dad, watching marathons on tv and wanting to run #alltheraces. Each participant in a marathon is living their own story; races are in the business of selling life-changing experiences. And signing up for a race and leaving with no medal and no shirt because organizers decided not to order anything over XL (bigger sizes cost more) is not the experience these people signed up for.

Ticket sales are not front and center for mature sports, but distance running still needs people to show up, both to run and to watch live when events are held. This sport cannot grow until it starts considering the fan experience, which means putting the 'back of the pack' front and center. (BTW, the peeps at the back run more races each year than the peeps at the front. in 2019 alone, Latoya has run more races, paid with her own money, than I have in my life. Long live hobbyjoggers.)

You can ignore the player experience, you can ignore the fan experience, but you really can't afford to ignore both.

Hot takes like this miss the point: analytics don't reduce the drama or encourage betting for hard-care fans like my dad. They allow the drama to continue in between games, which is the very point of engagement. The drama that follows both elite and professional running is the wrong kind of drama, the wrong kind of engagement.... everything about it is wrong.

I have no idea where to start in making it right. I'm just gonna thank God I'm not elite and start focusing on ways to put my runners front and center. If you have any ideas, my ears, and inbox, are open.

You are Coached. You are Loved. And you ARE #winningatlife

Coach MK

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Weekly Content Roundup

This week, Coach MK took on USA Rugby's treatment of her superfan husband, both on the blog and in mantras. LMK if i was too subtle.

In this week's Fitness Protection Podcast, we put Maintain front and center. You'll hear testimonials from our runners, learn about the 10-week marathon plans free to subscribers, and can see if Maintain is a good fit for you.

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Coach MK is making an effort to write a little more regularly in her 'CoachedandLoved" voice. The blog is a much more personal platform, so if that sounds interesting to you-

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Word of the Week

We wanted to share a little bit of a secret project we are working on, and this piece dovetails nicely with the #fppdictionary. as well as this week's news.

Renato Canova is a name you don't hear frequently enough. He heads up the American Distance Project in Colorado Springs, and he builds world champions by letting them rest.

And they NEED a lot of rest- his workouts are scary. The more rest you see on the plan, the more nervous you need to be about the days you run.

Sleep is Nature's EPO. Please, do not take any other form of EPO. Like for real, it's a terrible idea. ALL YOU NEED IS SLEEP.

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#WINNINGATLIFE

This space is reserved for one of our runners who is #WINNINGATLIFE!

Chrissa Gerard is #winningatlife! She has helped us edit our 50+ page book for Runner, Interrupted. It’s not easy to wrestle the stream of consciousness brilliance that emerges, sometimes fully formed, from MK’s brain in to something easily digestible, but she and her sister Cara are somehow both able to do it. It must be genetic! If you or your business have editing needs, please visit plaineditorial.com for more information, or email chrissa at plainedit@gmail.com .

WE APPRECIATE YOU SO BAD, CHRISSA! (sorry, we couldn't resist!)

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Training Footnotes

I missed my long run last weekend. I had 10 on the schedule but...life happens and I had to mom like a boss. My marathon in 4 WEEKS HOLY WHAT does not rest on that one run, it rests on the SURGERY I had in July. #perspective

I had surgery, yet a marathon doesn't feel totally out of reach. THIS is why we focus on what we CAN do, and Maintain. Showing up on Nov 3 says everything you need to know about me: that I'm Tenacious AF. Finish time? Pffft, whatever.

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