Guest blog: Raziq Rauf on what running culture means to him
The 'Running Sucks' Substacker has a book, This is Running, coming out - you should buy it!
Coach, journalist and now author, Raziq Rauf, is well-known in the running/writers world on Substack.
His popular Running Sucks newsletter has more than 5,000 subscribers and he’s currently taking part in the Salomon Off Track Gravel Tour, which involves him talking all things running and going on a gravel run in the uber-cool Salomon Aero Glide 4s.
Raz will also be reading a passage from his debut book, This is Running, a celebration of the running that explores the culture, history, brands, races, and people that make this sport we love so special.
Currently available on pre-order, This is Running will be released on April 2 in the UK and five days later in America.
Today, in a special guest post, we asked Raz to tell us all about what running culture means to him.
I talk about ‘running culture’ a lot, but I do so with the understanding that there's a danger of overthinking it all. I live my life through the Socratic Method of constantly questioning everything. It's the version of critical thinking that comes the most naturally. At this time in my life, I'm asking those questions around ideas of how and why we run. It comes from curiosity, I think.
You can think about 'running culture' through a Geographical lens, if you want – that's what I studied for four glorious years at the University of Manchester. It's simply the relationship that runners have with their running. It's as simple as that. It used to be that we had to run, as hunters, foragers, survivors. That was the culture. Running was as normal as breathing, or driving.
The opening line of my book, This is Running, says that, "running is a radical act." I believe that we learn something from every single run. Whether we learn something about ourselves or something about the world that we're running through, we have a different outlook at the end of every run.
These days we might run to combat the hours we're sitting at a desk, or for simple competition – against others or simply against ourselves. That means that running isn't as mundane an act as breathing or driving any more. Running is a choice. It's a leisure pursuit. It's a necessary act of physical exertion. It's a place where people are more free to experiment. Sometimes that's testing their bodies and/or minds, or sometimes it's experimenting with building a community. Other times, it's understanding enough about how we run so that we know how to look for great stories. (I find a lot of them on Running Tales.)
That all adds up to there being infinite ways for runners to interact with the world, and they all form strands of the subculture known as running. Woven together, they form a sturdy rope, and there's no limit to how many different strands of running culture. In my opinion, this world just gets richer and more interesting the more people discover this glorious sport. The world of running is stronger and more diverse than it ever has been.
Now, there are multiple reports of Socrates being really, really annoying as he traipsed through the city, asking everyone question upon question. While those around him may have accused him of overthinking, his pedigree as a great philosopher is proof that he maybe was thinking about the world around him just the right amount to make a lasting impression.
Trust me when I say that I don't put myself in the same echelon as Socrates (!), but using his methods to produce a body of work with even one percent of the longevity would be ok with me. With running culture as the focus of my work, I at least know that I'm not about to run out of subject matter any time soon.
◾Raziq Rauf will appear on the Running Tales Podcast on Monday, March 30 to talk about This is Running and all things running culture
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Love this :)