Apr 19, 2000

A coach of high-octane athletes greeted me in a friendly way, then launched a surprise attack. His e-mail blamed "Jogger's World" for the slippage in U.S. running performances on the worldwide scale.

I've heard this before, and answered the charges before. One rebuttal is that the magazine's focus has changed little in the past 30 years.

In the first half of that period this country produced Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar and Joan Benoit Samuelson. We didn't claim credit for their success, so why should we take blame when times aren't so good?

My second point is that Runner's World always has given more attention to promoting mass running than praising elite racers. Here, in total number of runners, we do share the credit for making the U.S. the world's most active breeding ground for marathoners.

The Road Running Information Center announced today that the number of finishers in U.S. marathons reached 435,000 last year. This is a record high, as it is almost every year. During the 1990s the marathoning population grew by 67 percent.

Success can be measured many ways. You be the judge of which is more important -- more runners or better racers?

I don't think it has to be either/or. A country can have both, as this one once did.

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