The first thing I did after finishing my first 100-mile race, Ohio’s Mohican 100, after sleeping for 16 hours, was write.
Something had happened to me in those 32 hours of rain and mud, and documenting it seemed like the best thing to do. I’m a writer, so perhaps that wasn’t surprising, but what was surprising to me was how so many other runners of this race also chose to document their experiences in race reports. Not only that, but many shared them far and wide—suggesting that if the story wasn’t shared publicly, the work wasn’t finished.
But was anyone actually reading these race reports? Why do runners create them in the first place? Are race reports simply navel gazing, or is there more to it? Setting out to answer these questions took me on a fascinating journey through the technological history of the past 50 years. Here’s what I found.
Race Reports and the Multiverse
In 2010, when I started running, blogs were de rigueur for race reports. Since then, the landscape has changed tremendously. With digital media, a variety of race report formats emerged, from vlogging to TikTok to Strava recaps….
