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FEATURES

Written features from the writers of CITIUS MAG

malcolm gladwell decade records lists
September 8, 2017

Revisionist Record Books: Examining track and field’s decade records suggested by Malcolm Gladwell

Why should we erase history? On the House of Run podcast, Malcolm Gladwell suggests recognize track and field’s records with the context of the era.

September 1, 2017

High School How-To: How to run a 5k cross country race

As great of a resource as Google is, the items that occupy the front page of most searches end up there through some combination of paid placement and/or shadowy computer algorithms. This means that any blowhard with a computer, an internet connection, and enough money can land on the front page. And I know you’re not going past the front page.

For people just looking for a quick “HOW TO” article or attempting to diagnose a weird rash, this can prove discouraging. Despite being firmly rooted in the Age of Information, the internet–our greatest informational resource–is full of misinformation. That, and our rapidly diminishing attention spans mean we’re spending less and less time doing our research. In 2017, most articles looking to inform a reader about anything would be better served to just eliminate all pictures and blocks of text and replace them with flashing GIFS. “IT’S POISON IVY,” flashing on the screen over and over is this generation’s ideal WebMD page.

With that being said, I’ve created a series of images and GIFS to help our high school readers get re-acquainted with cross country racing. If you’ve been feverishly googling “how to race a 5k” ever since practice started but have only found Runner’s World articles about “going slow and steady” or “running within yourself,” please know that–if you’re a high schooler–this is a stupid strategy. We at Citius Mag are here to teach you how to properly run a 5k cross country race in just two easy steps.

1. Attempt to PR in the mile in the first mile of most races

The ideal racing strategy in most high school races is to run your first mile far faster than your overall finishing pace. Do you fancy yourself a 17 minute 5k runner? Then please go out in 4:50. Are you faster than that? Maybe you’re a 16 minute 5k’er–then you should probably go out in 4:30.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this chart below. These are the top-50 finishers in the 2016 Minnesota State Cross Country championship. The average finishing time was 16:40, but the average first mile was 5:05 or roughly 15:47 pace. Did anyone in that race run a 15:47? No. No they didn’t. But they went out in what I like to call “aspirational pace.” Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

Chart courtesy of Scott Olberding.

2. Die a slow death

Where do you go after you nearly PR in the mile during a cross country race? Downhill, baby. Most high school cross country races are races of attrition. You go out stupid fast, and then the person who dies the least wins.

Three examples.

a) Resident Citius Good Boy, Paul Snyder, ran his best high school 5k in a time of 15:22. He remembers his splits as 4:30-9:30-15:22. “No one passed me after the first 400m,” he said. And with good reason, because so far, he employed the two hard and fast rules of high school cross country racing: go out far too fast, and die slowly.

If he had maintained his 4:30 mile pace, he would have ran 13:58. Instead he ran 4:30, 5:00, 5:52 for the last 1.125 (that’s about a 5:12 mile). Those are some phenomenal positive splits.

b) The first time I broke 17 minutes in a high school 5k I ran 4:59-10:40-16:58. So, what is that? 4:59-5:41-6:18 for the last 1.125 (or 5:36). I remember I got like 12th place in that race. What could I have done different to run faster and probably place higher? You guessed it, ran a faster first mile, die less.

c) If you look at the chart above, you’ll see that the finishing times all trend this way. Go out fast, die, and then die less. The ones who hang on are the winners.

As stated before, the average first mile from our sample of Class A Minnesotans was 5:20. The average second mile was 5:47, average 3rd mile was 5:49.

***

Now, you might be thinking, “well that’s stupid. I should go out and race a little bit smarter than that.” Please don’t. In college and professional running, the person who goes out the fastest is generally considered the martyr. They’re going to go out fast, have an impressive lead for about a mile of the race, and then finish like 55th. High school is the last chance you’ll get to go out there, race like an idiot, and still be rewarded. If this isn’t the absolute epitome of your time in high school I don’t know what is. Cherish it.

 

oasis gallagher brother rivalry
August 31, 2017

Between Oasis’s Gallagher brothers, who’s the superior jogger?

For as long as there has been Oasis, there has been the obvious question, “Which Gallagher brother do you like better?” Well we have thoughts

August 25, 2017

Track Talk: What’s your favorite part of cross country season?

The leaves are starting to change colors. We consulted with our good friend what’s their favorite part of cross country season.

August 22, 2017

How fast can LeBron James run a mile? Faster than you think

Citius Mag asks the question every runner has asked about other professional athletes since the beginning of time: how fast could LeBron James run a mile?

August 21, 2017

Your First Day of Cross Country

A look at how your first day of cross country practice will go. Beware this will be your life for the next four to five years as well.

August 10, 2017

We Have a World Championship Conspiracy Theory

Normally, the British seem to have their shit together. They strike me as a well-organized brood with a sharp sense of humor that can sometime not be understood but is nonetheless appreciated because of their silly, fun accents. However, like any warm-blooded, honest American knows, “the times they are a changin’” and the British have now become inept in their organization of championship events. Because of said ineptness we are left with conspiracy theories.

I love conspiracy theories. A friend of mine does this thing where he sends me an email with a subject of, for example, “Wilson Kipsang does 10 x 5K @ 8,000ft” and then the email body is a hyperlink and I click it and I get taken to some conspiracy theory about Phantom Time. I actually hate when he does this. I hate conspiracy theories.

This year’s World Championships is bloody full of ‘em, though. Between a pesky norovirus that ensured the world’s best stayed atop the podium and a poorly-placed cone, these British blokes sure know how to stir the pot. But there’s one theory that has yet to get the warranted media attention and it’s also not a theory; it’s a fact. Susan Krumins is Lynsey Sharp and Lynsey Sharp is Susan Kremins.

EXHIBIT A
Photo evidence

These are two photos of the same person. Let’s move on.

EXHIBIT B

Strangely similar birthdates according to Wikipedia

 

 

 

While normally an incredibly reliable source for correct information, I don’t “always” trust Wikipedia. This is a case where I respectfully refuse to accept the purported information on Wikipedia and rely on my own intuition to conclude Lynsey and Susan were both born on July 8th, 1986 because they are the same person.

EXHIBIT C

They have never raced one another

This could not be true. I do not have the appropriate manpower to figure out. It’s a safe assumption though. (Because they are the same person).

EXHIBIT D

Are you kidding me?

You equals me.

BUT, WHY?

This is the real meat and potatoes of this theory/reality. Why would Susan want to pose as a British 800-meter star? This is a very good question and I’m so glad I asked it. The answer is: I have no idea. Running is painful and having to do it for two people terrifies me greatly. Running for yourself is already mostly a terrible pastime, so having to do that for another is really just a bad idea. No human would want to do this. Which leads me to a new theory: Susan/Lynsey is a cyborg created by an inter-governmental agency with a serious desire for world track and field dominance.

Also Laura Muir looks like Arya Stark.

drew windle world championships
August 1, 2017

Drew Windle brings small-school pride to the world stage

Coming from a Division II school with world championships and Olympic dreams sounds daunting but a methodical progression has helped Drew Windle get there.

michael jordan of track
July 25, 2017

Making a Name: The Michael Jordan of Track has arrived

How a boy with the same name as the greatest basketball player ever became an elite U.S. steeplechaser. Meet the Michael Jordan of track.

July 23, 2017

It’s the 7 year anniversary of shitting my pants

It’s the seven-year anniversary of a terrible afternoon where I lost control of my bowels while running. The epic tale of shitting my shorts on a run.

July 17, 2017

Meet Jimmy Watkins: World Champs 800-meter runner turned touring musician

Welshman Jimmy Watkins has run 1:46 for the 800 and made a World Champs final. He’s also opened for Jeff Rosenstock. He’s the man. Get to know him.

kenyan runner sarah mwangi
July 14, 2017

Postcard from Kenya: Sarah Mwangi’s journey to UTEP

Next month, Sarah Mwangi fly from Nairobi to El Paso to start her four years at UTEP. Her flight will be the last and easiest leg of her journey.

running etiquette pedestrians
July 12, 2017

Running etiquette: How to interact with pedestrians without being a jerk

We discuss the proper running etiquette as it pertains to interacting with the non-running general public. We’ve all been assholes, but we needn’t be.

running break injuries
July 8, 2017

Why a long running break might not cure your injuries

Taking time off after a long season is necessary to let your body recover, but we also tend to think of running breaks as a cure for injuries.

division ii magic
July 7, 2017

The Strange Magic of Division II

Division II track and field has a slew of storylines that usually go unheard. David Ribich making the U.S. Championship 1500 meter final was inspiring

July 7, 2017

Running surfaces ranked; Paul + Ryan debate the best type of ground

Spurred on by a recent negative experience with nature’s cruelest mistake–sand–Ryan and Paul signed onto email to banter about what is the best running surface.

Ryan Sterner–10:17 AM

Hi Paul,

The other day I was duped into going to the beach, one of my least favorite activities. As I walked towards the water, I couldn’t help but notice that a tremendous amount of sand began accumulating in my shoes. Every step sent the stuff deeper into the crevices of my feet, socks, shoes, etc. It was miserable. There’s nothing worse than sand in your shoes.
I finally found a place to roast in the sun for an hour and proceeded to take off my shoes and clear them of the unwanted debris. In the middle of emptying my right shoe, some clown in half tights and Hokas sprinted across my periphery and on his back kick propelled a foot-full of sand into my eyes and mouth. There was nothing left to do but sit in the sun and feel sorry for myself.
But that leads me to today’s big question: beach running, what’s the deal? Sand has notoriously wonky footing, gets in your shoes, and exerts somewhere between 50-100% more energy than running on a nice, normal surface. Am I being a baby? Am I missing out on all the fun?
Sincerely,
Ryan

Paul Snyder–10:46 AM

Hey Ryan, I’m glad you reached out on this topic.

You are not being a baby. And you are not missing out on any fun.
Sand is awful. Sand is grating. Sand can be hot, or cold, but is rarely just right. Sand is why I don’t like beaches that much, and sand is why when I do go to the beach, I refuse to wear sandals.
And the only thing worse than walking or standing or lying down on sand, is running on it. If you’re far enough from the water, you’re just flailing around like a dumb ass trying to generate enough traction to facilitate forward momentum. If you’re down near the water, you’re running on a nice hard, compact surface, but on such a camber that you risk succumbing to hip dysplasia like an aging golden retriever.
But for whatever reason, beach jogging is romanticized by the DISHONEST media and liberal COASTAL elites IN Hollywood. Well color me a triggered snowflake because I think it sucks.
What do you say we rank all the running surfaces, to further demonstrate how awful sand is?

Ryan–11:03 AM

Friend, you have yourself a deal.

1. Concrete

I can hear people groaning already, but give me concrete or give me death. I’d estimate that anywhere between 75-90% of my lifetime mileage has been run on sidewalks, paved roads, or bike paths, and it’s been great. I’m sure the running bourgeois would love me to say something like “pulverized gravel” or “dirt.” These are surfaces for the modern day fancy dog. Concrete is a no nonsense surface, most of the time it’s flat, and you get great energy return.

Paul–11:44 AM

2. A Track

They don’t call it “sand & field,” folks. Tracks aren’t as hard as concrete, so they lose points there, but they are flat, round, and allow you to easily keep tabs on the distance you’ve logged. And as an added bonus, most–if not all-track world records have been set on a track!

Ryan–12:14 PM

3. Grass

There’s a reason we surround our houses with this stuff. Not only is it pleasing to look at, but if you need to learn how to ride a bike or do a back flip, it feels forgiving enough to do so without fear of scrapes–we all know that scrapes hurt the worst. I also can’t think of a nicer feeling than kicking off your shoes at the end of a run and finishing the thing off with a mile in the grass. It’s probably only ranked third because things hide in grass, like ticks and snakes.

Paul–12:30 PM

4. Dirt

Grass’s grittier cousin, dirt, is best known for its versatility (can become mud) and its ability to make filthy all it comes in contact with. Runners like running on dirt, because it shows up on their legs, which people then notice, alerting the general public to your recent brush with aerobic exercise!

Ryan–12:46 PM

6. Woodchips

What is a woodchip? It’s like sand except 1000 times larger. Running on woodchips presents many of the same problems as sand: kicking up bits of the running surface, the off chance of one of these things getting lodged in your shoe, splinters. None of those are good things.

Paul–12:50 PM

7. Treadmill

If you’d asked me to help with this ranking a year ago, I’d have put “Treadmill” way higher up. It’s basically concrete, but indoors. What’s not to love? Well, after falling in love with the treadmill this year, I developed a vitamin D deficiency due to lack of exposure to sunlight. So there’s that. Running outdoors has its drawbacks (weather, insects, hecklers), but it’s good for bone health somehow.

Ryan–1:26 PM

8. Sand

If you were having a picnic on any of the above surfaces and accidentally dropped part of your meal on it, it would be easy to pick it up, blow on it a little bit, and continue eating. If you drop anything in sand it’s fucking ruined. This is a metaphor for doing anything, not just running, on sand.

Paul–1:29 PM

Well, I think it’s safe to say we’ve satisfactorily ranked every available running surface in the world to prove our point that running on the beach is for losers!

July 5, 2017

How the Seinfeld-Meyer rematch could have been a boon to track & field

The track and & field brain trust missed a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on Seinfeld momentarily forcing people to care about footraces.

pheidippides training
July 2, 2017

We found Pheidippides’ Training Journal

How did Pheidippides manage to run 250 kilometers in two days? Luckily for us, we uncovered his secret training journal and opened it up.

June 18, 2017

Running Remarks: What do you eat to recover?

What do you like to eat for your recovery? Ryan Sterner asked some fellow Los Angelinos for remarks about their post-run meals to recover.

June 16, 2017

Disordered Eating and the Slope to Eating Disorders

We’d be remiss if we didn’t broach the serious topic of eating disorders during our food-themed week. They’re extremely prevalent in distance running.

June 13, 2017

Meet Soh Rui Yong, Flagstaff legend and Singaporean marathon star

Soh Rui Yong is on a quest to become Singapore’s fastest ever distance runner, while also raising the profile of the sport in the island city-state.

June 10, 2017

If you’re not at NCAAs, give something else a college try

Remember the good ol’ college days? You can still translate some of that behavior into your adult life and here’s how to do that.

June 8, 2017

Graduating seniors: How to exit with a bang, not a whimper at NCAAs

For the vast majority of seniors competing at NCAAs, their competitive career ends with their event. Here’s how to make a splash into civilian life.

sam parsons farewell letter
June 6, 2017

Sam Parsons’ Farewell Letter to N.C. State

Sam Parsons pens a letter to his teammates before he competes in an NC State uniform one last time at the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

an ode to seltzer
June 4, 2017

Seltzer, I Love You and I Don’t Care Who Knows It

Runners love seltzer and there’s studies out there that say it can be bad. There’s also studies out there that say it can be good. What to believe…

June 3, 2017

The Ten Commandments of Summer Cross Country Training

On the first day, of the first week after I graduated from high school, I was putzing around in a vast, empty shopping mall. My legs grew weary from trying to locate the Auntie Anne’s pretzel stand. I sat on a bench near an anthropomorphic track suit and the track suit spoke to me.

It called out: “This is what you must tell to the other members of the high school graduating class of 2009, who are embarking on their first summer of collegiate cross country training: you will soon see what I do to those whose hubris leads them to overtrain, or whose gluttony leads them to undertrain; and you will soon see that I will carry on the wings of eagles those who train smart, not hard during these hot summer months. These are the words you are to speak to your peers.”

“Okay,” I said. “So like, do you want me to make a Facebook group?”

“Yeah, I guess,” bellowed the track suit. And I made a Facebook group, and went home and posted on it what the track suit had ordained. Then the 18-year-olds of the Facebook group all “Liked” the status, and I went back to the mall and said to the track suit: “They will do everything you have said.”

“Neat,” called out the track suit. “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, and we can take a selfie to post on the Facebook group, so that all its members will forever trust you as a smart boy about training.”

The track suit then instructed me to post on the group, informing its members to take frequent showers and drink plenty of water.

“And another thing,” it called out, “prepare yourself for the next day; abstain from sexual relations.”

“No problem,” I, a huge virgin, said.

I went home, jogged a 30-minute double, and went to sleep. Then the next day, when I returned to the mall to exchange some pants for a slightly smaller size, I found the mall ablaze, plumes of noxious black smoke radiating from it, then I heard the voice of the track suit, coming at once from nowhere and everywhere.

And it spoke these words:

“I am the anthropomorphic track suit you met at the mall. Your college coach knows a shit ton about training, so you should listen to them, but also listen to me, because you and your teenage dirtbag cronies could use a head check.”

And I carved it into stone.

  1. 1.Thou shalt drink plenty of water. For it is summer, and summer is hot. And water is good.
  2. Thou shalt respect the double. There shall come a time when one run is not enough. Then thou shalt do two runs. Just not too soon.
  3. Thou shalt not half step.
  4. Thou shalt not overdo it. Fall is for racing. Summer is for training.
  5. Thou shalt not underdo it. Eat the flesh of chicken nuggets and imbibe the nectars of Keystone, but in moderation. Thou must still run.
  6. Thou shalt run hills, and run hills often.
  7. Thou shalt run strides, at a slightly lesser frequency than thou runneth hills.
  8. Thou shalt abide by thy coach. If thy coach decrees a week of 80 miles, thou shalt runneth 80 miles, not 60, not 100.
  9. Thou shalt not PR in a race distance the first workout back on campus. Nobody cares for workout heroes. Least of all me, the anthropomorphic track suit.
  10. Thou shalt get the dumbassery out of thy system. Procure thy stupid hair cuts, ironic tattoos, and body piercings before the season begineth, for the season is no time for a staph infection or rat tail.

 

 

May 31, 2017

The National Spelling Bee and Track & Field: a moment of reflection

 

 

“Dumb? D-U-M-B. Dumb”

This week marks the 90th iteration of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. For those who aren’t familiar with what that means, it’s the one week out of the year where we pretend as a nation to care about scholastic pursuits and intellectual accomplishments.

I’d say that on the whole, it’s a good thing. Too much attention is given to sports in general, but especially to sports as they pertain to earning college athletic-based financial aid. There are way more academic scholarships out there than there are athletic ones, so any time we’re collectively reminded that brain-based activities are not just personally beneficial, but potentially financially lucrative, that’s a win.

However, with this momentary acknowledgement of brain, instead of just brawn, comes the crippling realization that all of the Bee’s competitors are vastly more intelligent than me.

There is a goddamn six year old in this year’s competition. Six. She is a kindergartner from Oklahoma and she will be appearing on national television spelling polysyllabic, probably obsolete words. I’ve used spell check six times while writing this one paragraph on a track blog.

Because I am a very small person, I have to rationalize how I am in some way superior to these elementary-to-middle-school-aged children. It used to be that I could scoff and just lie to myself: “harummph, these dweebs can’t run 12.5 laps around a track as fast as me, so I’m better!” But now, as my bones have reached peak fragility, I don’t even have that delusion to fall back on.

My time is up, both academically and athletically. I know that for years now I’ve been growing dumber and slower, and neither trend shows any sign of reversing itself. I must cede the floor to the rising stars of spelling, especially given that at least one can probably beat me in a footrace.

 

“Glory days, well, they’ll pass you by”

Representation of the author’s physical and mental decay

 

 

With the correct brand of mental gymnastics, you can dupe yourself into believing that when you were the age of the Bee entrants, you were better than them, by being EXCEPTIONALLY WELL-ROUNDED.

And so a fun thought experiment is to determine when your average running-spelling ability was at its highest (or project when you’ll hit that point).

I reached my athletic peak at 20 and have been on a steady decline ever since. And I probably developed some sort of sub-clinical brain disease in 2008, because since since my 17th birthday because I sure as hell have gotten worse at spelling every year since.

So go ahead and chart your own greatness and subsequent fall from it. You may have a long downward slide ahead of you, but at least you were a solid, well-rounded champion at one point. And all the more power to you if you are still bettering yourself past your late teens.

Be sure to share with us your Spelling-Running Peak!

 

May 27, 2017

Eat like Pre while you watch Pre: an educated guess as to the legend’s diet

To race like the best, you gotta dine like the best. But the current best don’t dine like they used to. Let’s take a look at how Pre might have eaten.

brown runner depression story
May 26, 2017

In his words: Ivy League runner chronicles his battle and overcoming depression

Ben Sutherland, a rising senior on the cross-country team at Brown, reached out to Citius Mag to share his battle with depression in his own words.

May 26, 2017

Let’s Find the Current Pre

Here is the deal with Steve Prefontaine: he is no longer with us. “He is no longer with us” is a pretty banal way to classify death. Sometimes at brunch, my buddy gets up to go to the bathroom and, for the next few minutes, he is no longer with us. I’m not comparing Pre’s death to my friend’s overactive bladder, what I’m doing is grabbing your undivided attention while I set out on a noble quest to FIND THE NEXT PRE.

Now that we have gone through that little two-step, let’s begin.

This exercise hinges on pinpointing the exact qualities that made Pre a cultural zeitgeist, while also providing the sticking power which lead to his current title as: transcendent icon. But maybe I’m wrong? Actually I probably am wrong. I’m wrong a lot. I think I’m wrong because culturally the running world has shifted from placing value on honest mustaches, being from small towns, and providing inspirational quotes for mostly bad tattoos to a culture gravitating towards memes, dabbing, and shoes with a lot of foam. The entirety of this retrograde can be blamed on Twitter.

What I’m really looking for is the CURRENT PRE. As our landscape exists today, I’m not sure the NEXT PRE could ever be re-created or found. Pre was the golden boy for an American running boom, a burgeoning sports equipment brand, and he lived in an age where young men were drinking enough cow milk to create the testosterone needed to grow some real facial fur. Nowadays, our heroes are practically-hairless-almond-milk-drinking-manboys. Pre’s existence was serendipitously aligned with the necessary occurrences to not only create a legend during his heyday, but to cement himself in the annals of track and field lore forever. There will never be another Pre – because he is dead – but perhaps the current Pre is out there right now, tweeting a dank meme, and lacing up some stupid shoes.

Below are the necessary criteria to be considered the CURRENT PRE.

Must have a physical feature people find fascinating 40 years after you’ve died

Pre’s mustache remains iconic. You slap a mustache on a balloon and thousands of high school runners would tell you the balloon is now Pre, and Pre is now a balloon. It’s a transcendent symbol for the man. But were mustaches as revered back then as they are now? I doubt it. Seems like everyone had a caterpillar growing on their lip back then. In fact, if you didn’t, you probably were ostracized. And rightly so. Like a fine Franzia Cab Sav, the 1970’s mustaches ages with panache and dignity.

What do we have now that seems normal, but will grow in appreciation as the years pass? Lately, men have been doing some really terrible things with their hair. The manbun, while I assume still popular in certain EDM-circles and weight rooms, seems to have fizzled out nicely. The depression-era hardpart has made a nice resurgence among millennials, and the cyclical nature leads me to believe it will still be around in a few decades.

Neither of these are comparable to the mustache, though.

You know what is? The femalebun. This is the first hint that the CURRENT PRE may in fact not have a penis. Alexi Pappas has inspired hordes of females to not only run with buns, but to write poetry about the nuances of how their buns make them feel. Manbuns incite hate, femalebuns incite art.

Must be adept at the internet while possessing strong knowledge of current trends and eagerness to actively interact with brands and consumers.

I can neither confirm nor deny Kyle Merber is trending towards CURRENT PRE status.

Must be fast.

This criterion remains unchanged from Pre’s day. Simply put, being fast is better than being slow. The whole tortoise and hare thing is bullshit. If you want to be put on a pedestal, you really need to be winning races while running fast. This is the only caveat to transcendence that will stay constant until humans decide putting so much time, effort, and care into running is silly and we really should put the time, effort, care into figuring out how to keep our planet from becoming a barbeque briquette.

Must have famous family.

All our current day stars have famous family members. For every Matt Centrowitz Junior, there’s a Matt Centrowitz Senior providing genetics. Drake’s dad is famous because millions of people find his son’s constant whining to be musically appealing. That baby over in the U.K. is famous because his parent’s are famous and their parents are famous. It’s like nepotism, I think. Like I alluded to earlier, I’m wrong a lot. But I’m not wrong about this. To be relevant in our present world, some family members better have paved the way for you.

Must wear silly shoes.

The name of the game in shoes these days? Silly. Companies are slowly realizing how nice it is to run in comfortable shoes. They saw the writing on the bathroom stall wall and the scribbles read “STANLEY WANTS MORE FOAM IN HIS SHOES.” All-caps brand HOKE ONE ONE came hard with the heel lifts, only to see Nike develop their tech even further to help perpetuate the notion shoes make you faster. The CURRENT PRE isn’t jogging around in some normal looking New Balance, the runner we’re after is pounding the pavement in some marshmallows with laces.

CONCLUSION

The CURRENT PRE is a world-class, bun-wearing female, who is good at the internets, has a family member who has done something either illegal or courageous to bring fame to their surname, and looks like the Michelin man from the ankle below.

pre lives jared leto
May 25, 2017

In the Jared Leto Cinematic Universe, Cinematic Pre literally lives

Movies are weird, man. It’s easy to mix them all up. If you do it right through Jared Leto, you can reason that Prefontaine went on to do some wild stuff

May 22, 2017

Eight stress fractures for one elusive season; was it worth it?

After eight stress fractures, Columbia senior Keenan Piper is vying for a spot on the starting line at NCAAs; but was it all worth it?

May 19, 2017

How we got here: the Paul Ryan marathon lie, a slippery slope

We’ve reached a sort of News Singularity, where a major story breaks every hour. Paul Ryan’s marathon lie helped contribute to our current reality.

May 19, 2017

The Hail Mary of track and field

Really cool moments like home runs and touchdowns happen in other sports. What’s track and field’s really-cool moment? Can we make one?

May 10, 2017

Feast your eyes on the best male athlete portraits in track and field (Part VI)

Picture day is something to look forward to every year. These runners surely made the most out of their respective roster portraits. Part VI.

kipchoge nike breaking2
May 9, 2017

The last thing we have to say about Nike’s Breaking2

If you’ve been to CITIUS MAG in the past week, you saw us making quite a stink over Nike’s #Breaking2 attempt. As much as we’d love to say we were doing it because Nike was handing us fistfuls of cash under the table, that would be a lie. Did we really believe it was going to happen? Perhaps. But mostly we just thought it was a very silly idea and it was brilliant fodder for a week’s worth of content.

All of us can agree on a few things that #Breaking2 was: an enormous marketing stunt, a stellar branding initiative, and a whole lot of hype. Despite all of that, by the time Eliud Kipchoge crossed the finish line 26 seconds behind the timing-laser wielding electronic car, you (both the royal “you” and you in particular), would be a fool to say that the event wasn’t important, a bit existential, and something we won’t see again in the near future.

The importance of the event is undeniable. Broken down to its core, the attempt was about peak human performance. We can wax poetic all day long about doing what’s never been done, or breaking the unbreakable barrier.

But for me, after it became apparent he might do the damn thing, it was about recognizing the few moments in humanity’s miserable history where we can point to a specific spot on our timeline and say “this was the day we saw the greatest a human ever was at distance running.” It was never about the barrier. It was always about finding the limits of the human machine, and we can safely say that Kipchoge, Zersenay Tadese, and Lelisa Desisa were given every opportunity to do it.

For 99% of the population, your life’s work is intangible, judged by the day to day, and how you live your life. Our cultural obsession with sports is likely driven somewhat by being able to wrap our minds around a singular, tangible goal. There’s nothing as tangible in sports, other than maybe powerlifting, than what Kipchoge did on Saturday.

You can commute to your office everyday, but no matter how undeniable you are at creating beautiful pivot tables or writing immaculate lines of code, no one will ever really know (or try to know) if what you did in your beige cubicle that day was taking it to the limit in terms of what a human could do to an excel doc. Sports give us a definitive goal to aspire towards, and the pursuit of running as fast as you can, for as long as you can leaves very little wiggle room for any other argument against greatness.

Though Nike is worth billions and billions of dollars it’s not likely we’ll see them stage something like this again. They’re instead opting to focus on other “moonshots.” Maybe they can take some cues from Citius.

In regular circumstances–regular meaning without advanced robotics, waves of pacers, springy shoes, Kevin Hart, etc–we’re a long ways from breaking two. Going to the well the way Kipchoge did is ill-advised racing tactics, and many times the stakes are seemingly higher; things like Olympic medals or large, novelty checks always need to be considered. And how many more performances like that do you think a person has in them? Thinking about the aftermath of Kipchoge’s run brings out the old timey doctor in me: if he attempts it again I’m sure he’d contract a type of flu he’s likely not shake the rest of his life, if it doesn’t kill him first.

So here we are, on the other side of an honest crack at the two hour marathon. What did we learn? Well, mostly that humanity will always stop and recognize humanity. The pursuit of self-actualization is evolving, and relative. But not with this. The sub-two hour attempt was humanity’s attempt at self-actualization. If you were like me, over the last five miles of Kipchoge’s miracle run, your chest tightened, and you stared at your phone in disbelief, as a man thundered along faster than any other man had done before him, for the sole reason of showing us what was possible. It was stupid. It was kind of pointless. But god damn if it wasn’t a thing of beauty.

May 2, 2017

How Else to Break2

After this weekend, we can still aim to break two in other ways. It doesn’t just have to be two hours. We explain other Breaking2 scenarios.

May 2, 2017

On Monza: An inside look at the course picked for Breaking 2

Paul Snyder once went to the race track in Italy where Nike will host the Breaking 2 attempt to break the two-hour marathon mark.

May 1, 2017

Evaluating Nike’s Breaking2 Project vs. other high-profile, pop-cultural promises

Nike’s Sub-2 Project: Managing the Hype

Some weather-dependent day this weekend, the triumvirate of Eliud Kipchoge, Lelisa Desisa, and Zersenay Tadese will line up in Monza, Italy, to complete just shy of 18 trips around the town’s 1.5 mile long Formula One track. Nike — the sponsor of the event — is pretending to rest its hopes on one of these three men traversing 26.2 miles in a time of 1:59:59 or faster.

But sub-two or not, Nike’s already won.

The company hasn’t come out and said as much, but it is nothing more than a marketing ruse, and a highly successful one at that. Just type “nike sub 2” into Google, and marvel at the number of gushing press clippings from countless highly reputable journalistic outlets (now including Citius Mag!). Once again, Nike has done what it does best: drum up hype at low-to-no cost.

The success of the attempt is irrelevant. In all likelihood, none of the selected, impossibly gifted athletes will dip below the two hour threshold this weekend, despite every advantage bestowed upon them by Nike. Controversial energy-preserving shoes, a closed and non-record-eligible course, fluids and fuel on demand, vehicular pacers, the like. It’s not enough to make it happen. We just aren’t there yet.

It doesn’t seem likely that almost three minutes will be lopped off of an already imposing world record. But in terms of undelivered upon promises, Nike’s probable failure to deliver the world’s first marathon time beginning with a “1,” just isn’t that big of a deal. So it seems pretty silly to get all worked up over a massive multinational corporation doing what it exists to do: sell shit.

Someday, somebody somewhere will run 1:59. And the world will keep spinning until then— and after.

No harm, no foul. And compared to other recent pop-cultural misleadings, it barely registers as anything other than an ambitious plan falling shy of its endgame. Let’s take a look at some of the others, on the below “Graph of Grift!”

The Graph of Grift

Large scale corporate fraud can be extremely damaging, extremely funny, worth acknowledging, and in some instances, not even requiring recognition.

Extremely Damaging Quadrant

When a claim is huge, and the failure to deliver on it qualifies as downright fraudulent, bad things happen. Things like worsening race relations, the loss of thousands of people’s life-savings, and misdiagnosing of major illness can occur. True catastrophes. These are the things that keep investigative journalism relevant, and deserve our fullest condemnation.

Assholes scamming senior citizens by calling and pretending to be their bail-seeking, imprisoned grandchildren are an everyday example.

Extremely Funny Quadrant

When the stakes are low, the extremely wealthy are targeted, and fraud occurs, the result is a sort of cathartic humor we plebeians can revel in. A bunch of millionaire Vine stars got swindled by Ja Rule into paying thousands of dollars to eat bread sandwiches and sleep in FEMA tents? That’s pretty funny. Some Gwyneth Paltrow fans purchased a purported cold juicing device that basically just squirts out the contents of expensive bags of liquidized fruit? High comedy.

Worth Acknowledging Quadrant

Nike’s sub-two attempt and accompanying hype falls into this third camp. It’s a bold claim, and not so far outside the realm of possibility that we can fully scoff at it. So instead, we pay attention to claims like these, express our skepticism, and then get to say “I told you so” when they bomb.

(Think: Jay-Z’s dumb streaming service, TIDAL, or Neil Young’s PonoPlayer.)

Not Requiring Recognition Quadrant

This is the type of unfulfilled hype that is so blatant, the lie is inextricable from the thing itself in a very public way. You know full well where your money is going— down the tubes— and you don’t care.

When you pull off of the interstate at the behest of a billboard reading “WORLD’S LARGEST CERAMIC GOBLIN,” you are willingly entering this space.

What does it all mean?

We are deceived from the moment we’re born. (“What a beautiful baby” is the first repeated lie we hear. Most babies are strange looking and don’t become cute until a few months of out-of-the-womb development.) We can all handle some more.

When Kipchoge is this weekend’s sole finisher, and runs 2:02:48, nobody has gotten hurt. The sport that we love will continue to be an afterthought  between Olympic cycles. And Nike will still make billions of dollars a year. There are greater atrocities out there more deserving of our attention.

And if I’m wrong? Then something pretty cool has succeeded in taking place.

brooks beasts altitude
April 28, 2017

Lessons learned from altitude training with the Beasts

What are the benefits of training at altitude? One of our writers went to Albuquerque and trained with Danny Mackey’s Brooks Beasts for a few days.

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