Running Shorts

With Cincinnati's very own Queen Bee Half Marathon coming up, I wanted to get this out there: I absolutely abhor all-women's races. I don't think they should exist. I don't even think they should be called races. I'm not going to link to any race websites because I don't want to give them the dignity. They may be worse than color runs and other novelty events in my book. Before you call me a sexist and a male chauvinist pig, hear me out: I don't think all-women's events are necessary any more . This isn't the era of race directors physically pulling Katharine Switzer out of a race specifically because she's a woman; rather, women make up the majority of participants in running events today. Thirty or forty years ago, when road running was an all-male endeavor, women's-only events definitely had a place. But now, nearly every race is a majority female affair. Road races are already women's races -- making some specifically only  for wo

With the Olympics starting this week (!), I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It would be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps. The Marathon Major Model When it comes to road racing, only one event really matters: the marathon. Oh sure, every other distance from one mile on up may be contested and may be competitive, but the only one that people really care about is the marathon. It's the standard by which all other distance races are judged. As it currently exists, the Abbot World Marathon Major series is actually the closest thing athletics has to a fully professional circuit.