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During my very brief tenure as the digital director of Runner’s World — September 2017 to May 2018¹ — I accomplished only a few things worth remembering. I got the RW team to taste-test all 27 varieties of GU energy gel. I helped assemble a panel to evaluate Nike’s new sports hijab. I assigned this feature on segregation among runners in Baltimore. I told everyone about my thermos. And I had a writer answer the eternal question: Do runners even need toenails, anyway?

Not bad, I guess, for barely half a year on the job. Still, I regret that I didn’t have time to launch a series that I’m sure would have gotten some attention: “Running in the Age of Trump.” The idea was to look at how the then-new presidential administration was addressing the issues most important to runners. Clean air and water. Climate change. Access to parks, the wilderness, and public lands. Safety for runners, particularly women and minority groups. Pedestrian access in cities. The overseas manufacture of most athletic clothing. Chafing, in general. It’s easy to laugh now, but I wanted to approach these with the utmost seriousness, to delve into how the White House’s plans would affect the sport we loved. But before I could get it together, the layoffs came down, and I was out.

I had forgotten all of this until the other day, when I stumbled on this Washington Post opinion piece: How running can save democracy. In it, Scott Warren, a fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, recycles every hoary cliché about running as he imagines 30,000 people getting set for the Boston Marathon. Stretching, shoelaces, energy gels, GPS watches, the starting line — and he’s off to the sunniest of stereotypes: “I think the marathon — as with other marathons and half-marathons and 10Ks and other races in the United States this year — will have a subtle, added importance: It offers a shared experience, one that can actually inspire hope, at a time when America seems weighed down with cynicism and dread.”

His argument: While everything else in American life currently divides us — politically, economically, socially — when we’re running a marathon, we have no “partisan affiliation.”

Just as supportive are the onlookers, the cheering sections. Throughout marathon day, whether in Boston or elsewhere, runners can simply be runners: “The utter absence of political friction is delightful. It’s hard to imagine someone holding back a cheer because the runner going by might be MAGA or a tree-hugging progressive.”

Oh god, this is such bullshit.

More after the ad…

I know, I know: It’s easy to dunk on WaPo Op-Eds. The newspaper that once warned that “democracy dies in darkness” has overtly shifted its opinion section to pieces advocating for “personal liberties and free markets.” No one is expecting bared teeth from its pages these days.

And I might’ve let this one slide, except that it represents a pretty common view in the running world: Our love of this sport — its ease and its difficulty, its endorphic joys and its chronic pains — unites us above and beyond any individual differences. It’s a wonderful view, and it’s even true… sometimes. The problem is that at some point, the race is over. The runners collect their medals, their bananas, their cold bagels and inedible Red Delicious apples, and limp to their hotels for a shower and a nap. The spectators toss their clever DIY signs (“Run like you stole from the Louvre!”) into the garbage. The clean-up crews scrape Dixie cups from the asphalt and load porta-potties onto flatbeds. Everyone feels awesome about themselves. And they should — they’ve all done (or helped someone do) a great and challenging thing.

And then some of them go home and vote for politicians who are gutting environmental protections, selling off public lands, and blocking middling trans athletes from playing sports in school. They love guns and sneer at electric vehicles. They’re abusive in one way or another to their partners and their children, or they’re threatening, or even outright hostile, to women, to immigrants, to anyone who doesn’t look like them. Yes, some runners are bad for running.

How many of them? What are the political breakdowns among runners? I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone does. As recently as 2022², the Global Running Survey, produced by the industry association Running USA, was not asking its 5,500 respondents about their political views. (Or if it was, it didn’t include them in the report.) The survey did, however, offer statistical portraits of Black runners, Indigenous runners, Asian/Hispanic/mixed-race runners, old runners and young runners and non-binary runners. Which is wonderfully inclusive — except that this inclusivity once again pretends that in certain ways all runners (and their adoring supporters) are the same, when the reality is that some — 50%? 25%? 7%? 80%? — may be making choices that actively harm the sport and those who enjoy it.

In some ways, I find it almost impossible to imagine. As runners, don’t we all want to breathe clean air, to freely explore the outdoors, to feel safe on the streets? Who among us, which of us who claim to love the sport, could act and vote against these interests Who are these people? Is it the race director, the roadside Nuun dispenser, the moms driving teens to cross-country, the rando who waves at you as you pass each other in the park every morning? (Is it you?) You can’t easily find out, and you can’t go around suspecting everyone of being the enemy. That way lies madness! (It also adds 1.2 km to your route.) But, well, some people are opposed to your well-being, whether they’re conscious of it or not. Let’s not pretend they don’t exist.

Nor should we, deep in the mire of our suspicions, change our behavior toward those we encounter on our runs. There is some truth to Scott Warren’s dream — we runners can and do support one another, regardless of age, sex, race, or ability, and we should not allow our political differences, real or perceived, to interfere with that. Many of us — most of us, I hope — continue that support long after we reach the finish line, in small ways and big ones. As we should; it’s the right thing to do³. But some of us, well, let’s just say their gait needs adjusting.

One of the perennial debates in the running world — and one of the dumbest — is “How do you define a real runner?” Do you need to run every day, every week? Do you need to race at least one 5K? One marathon? Does a real runner need to be able to hit an 8-minute mile? An 11-minute one? A six-minute one? Does walking count as running? In that spirit, I want to propose a new qualification for “real runners,” the only one that matters: It’s not how you run — it’s how you vote. 🪨🪨🪨