Distance running's record in the area of anti-black racism remains remarkably unblemished
It's time for another round of Outside, Inc. cuts, and the strongest candidates are making sure to be seen
In February 2020, a group of men in Georgia killed someone while he was out jogging and were later convicted of murder. The men were white; predictably, one of them was even named Travis. The victim, named Ahmaud, was black. None of these people are or were, by any definition, members of “the running community.”
Over three years later, grifters in “the running community” are still managing to wrench tiny droplets of grievance-milk from this same wrinkled and desiccated Wokish titty. Illiterate and globular cackleberries who don’t even qualify as runners even when viewed through the widest-angle lens, but qualify as minorities and grifters, always refer to the murder Ahmaud Arbery as evidence of anti-black racism within “the running community.”
But rather than be annoyed by this, I’m taking it as a sign that white racists are painfully lacking in “the running community.” If unfunny waddling jokes like Alison Desir have been forced to refer for years to events that are either imaginary or have nothing to do with “the running community,” can’t we* call an end to the “antiracism”? Mission accomplished! And we won’t even point out a single one of the many events since February 2020 that not only inconvenience the “running is awash in white supremacy” narrative, but even seem to invert it.
Someone—yet another whiny, obviously well-off woman guzzling straight from the cask of yet another Wokish “nonprofit” organization—has managed to write an essay about anti-black racism for Outside Online—which, as you can see, has no functioning paywall—that transcends the inducement of eye-rolls and borders on parody.
Obviously, readers unaware that the entire thing is horseshit would have earnest questions, such as:
“Wait, you live in a rich neighborhood, but you’re afraid to run through it?”
“Wait, you’re worried about being chased down and beaten by a bunch of rich fuckin’ 75-year-olds who live on gated properties?”
“Wait, you’re treating imagining being a victim of violence as the same thing as actually being attacked?”
The whole thing is an undiluted absurdity. And, not only because its author lives in Boulder and calls herself a trail runner, I’m guessing it was assigned fellow Boulder-invader Zoe Rom, an Outside, Inc. hackstress who demeans white man yet hangs out with them, and who claims women like her—i.e., incompetent, absentee editors—are underpaid.
Rom is basically a “white” version of persistent digital dipshit (and wise Substack-blog abandoner) Molly Mirhashem who, to her credit would rather live in the mountains than in New York City. Neither would have any role whatsoever in publishing were the publishing industry still legitimate instead of the purview of indolent, cowardly twats and sleazelords.
Rom is responsible for this recent “analysis” in which she attempts to explain the difference between finishing times in the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon using Strava training data, somehow managing to ignore the obvious reason even while referring to it:
due to stringent qualifying standards, Boston skews fast, and we generally see that faster runners tend to train more
It would be fair to ask if Rom would be surprised to learn that Boston Marathon runners with elite bibs tend to have faster finishing times than those without, that people in the first corral on average outperform those in the second corral, and that wheelchair racers go faster on downhills.
A fair question at this point: Are the people churning out this stuff—in addition to being morally repugnant—really as stupid as their output suggests, or are they mostly just taking advantage of Outside, Inc. CEO Robin Thurston’s largesse while it lasts, paying themselves and their friends to churn out garbage with no oversight?
It’s undoubtedly a glorious mixture of both; the “I fear for my life in Boulder” bozo is probably 98% grifter and 2% concerned citizen, while Rom is probably not as ignorant as the Boston vs. New York piece and her other work makes her seem and is instead lazy, as lazy as she’s allowed to be.
Outside, Inc. is, at least by one model, due to start dumping more editorial ballast.
It’s tempting to think that editors and writers like Rom are as sloppy as the are mainly because they know their jobs might end at any time, and that Thurston doesn’t care one bit about them. Were they determined to be good writers and editors, they’d ignore this and try to do good work anyway.
But it’s possible the crop of goofballs who keep churning out bullshit like this and blocking anyone who questions it really are as intellectually barren as they are spiritually corrupt, gutless, and ugly. A 30-second gander around the rest of the corporate running media and Instagram is enough to push that hypothesis toward the top of the heap.
Either way, the arrogance of these assholes is amazing. They could hardly suck worse at everything they do. Most barely even run, and as a rule, they’re ignorant, they lie, they contradict their own words and principles, and they’re visibly envious of women who aren’t some combination of ugly and slow. Boo-boo to you, but what deserves rewarding in that, financial or otherwise?