Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 117, April 2019 | Page 18

OPINION
A simple sum will show how expensive the ‘simple sport’
has become: Add club membership fees and licence
number, plus the club kit (especially the right colour
shorts) to the cost of entering a few races, and you are
easily topping R1500, and that’s not even entering the
expensive races. For many people, that is a lot of money.
What are your alternatives? Don’t sign up for the
organised events. If you only run parkruns, it costs
you nothing other than your running shoes and kit, like
in the old days. You can choose what you wear. You
can listen to music and won’t be disqualified for some
reason you can’t understand. And you get results the
same day, and the organisers have a huge database
with all your results going back many years. Or get
together with some friends, or your club, and go for
a long run. Maybe someone will be nice enough to
organise a nice route and some refreshments along
the way, if you chip in R20.
If we consider that a lot of people are really only
training for that big one, for example, Comrades, then
why do they need the other races that are run every
weekend? Is a 10km or a half marathon really going
to assist them with their training? Surely a race is
exactly that, a race? They want a steady run at their
Comrades pace, not a 10km race every weekend.
When they have a choice between the weekend 10km
race and a long training run, surely they should be
choosing the training run?
18
Choosing a Path
Given this scenario, what do the administrators do?
They threaten. They claim the IAAF rules say you
can’t participate in training runs – which, of course, is
nonsense, and they should tell us which rule number
they are using – as a way of trying to bully people to
run races instead of training runs. Quite frankly, they
have missed the point. In a free country, where people
can run on pavements and there is no restriction
on movement, no administrator is ever going to win
a battle that tries to stop people going for a run,
whether it is by themselves or with 100 of fellow
runners. Does it make a difference that long runs are
organised by individuals, and that people pay to take
part (even if it is a donation towards costs)? Does it
matter that there is a form of fixture list for these runs?
My answer is no.
Is there anything wrong with planning a training
programme? Is there any harm that people pay
for someone else’s services, as you would pay a
plumber or a dentist? Surely there is no difference
between what the organisers of these runs are
doing, and a coach who sends out training
programmes to runners and charges for it. In both
cases there is a charge, except the organisers of the
long runs have actual expenses, and in both cases
the runners are not entering the races because they
are following a training programme that doesn’t
involve racing. There is no difference between what
they are doing and any club organising a training
run for its members. If the official fixture list caters
for the needs of people training for big races and
the races are offering what they need at the right
price, simple economics says people won’t pay to
do long runs.
What about the race organisers? Are they really
suffering because of competition from these long
runs? That seems to be the argument made out in
the article in Modern Athlete last month. How do you
normally respond to competition in the real world?
You make yourself more attractive. You also recognise
what your market is and adapt accordingly. You
simply cannot tell someone they have to run (and pay
for) races instead of going for a training run. If those
training runs are growing and races are shrinking, is
that not a sign that the official calendar is wrong? Or
that races are not offering what people are looking
for?
The Bottom Line
Rather than threaten, the administrators should
be reviewing the situation. Are numbers actually
decreasing at races because of training runs? Put
differently, is there actual evidence that race numbers
are decreasing? And is there actual evidence that
this is because of clashes with training runs? If there
is a proven link, why are people choosing organised
training runs over races? Is it because of cost? Is it
because the race distance is not appropriate? Are
races just becoming unattractive to those runners?
Once those issues are addressed, the administrators
can then assess whether the long runs are a problem,
or if the road racing system is the problem. But threats
will never work, and no amount of justifying will make
them work, either.
About the Author
James is a former President of Athletics South Africa and Western Province Athletics, and has been involved in
athletics and road running for more than 30 years, as an athlete, coach and administrator.
ISSUE 117 APRIL 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
Some believe the road running bubble is going
to burst soon, due to there being too many
races on the calendar
too expensive. Too many races are put on for no
reason whatsoever other than because clubs think
they can make money out of them, or to stroke
someone’s ego. There are just too many races put on
the calendar with no thought to why they are there.
For now there may be continued growth, but the
bubble will burst.