Terrell Johnson: How one writer became ‘Substack Running Royalty’
When Terrell Johnson couldn’t find a single guide to half marathon races he created one himself
“If I hadn’t have done this newsletter there’s an excellent chance I’d have given up running a long time ago.”
Terrell Johnson is Substack ‘Running Royalty’, with his ‘The Half Marathoner’ newsletter pulling in more than 39,000 subscribers.
The long-time runner found his tribe back in the early-2000s when he launched his own website, ‘The Half Marathon Guide’, in response to a lack of a centralised place to find details of races.
He has since built community and enjoyment into his run-based enterprises, commodities which have kept him engaged and excited about the running world - even when the sport itself may not have been enough.
He told the Running Tales Podcast: “The pull of being, especially during Covid even though we weren’t physically together, part of this community of people who were doing this thing, training for a distance even though we weren’t going to run it together, there is something about that which keeps you going.
“There are certainly people who can keep themselves motivated. But I would bet 80% of people are not like that. It’s much easier to stay motivated and consistent when you have that social aspect to it, and that community aspect to it.
“It makes it so much more fun. I’m really glad I have stayed with running. A lot of people I know are on blood pressure medication, and I’m not - so, we’re doing pretty good at 55.”
From ‘unathletic schoolboy’ to Bermuda Marathon finisher:
A self-described ‘unathletic schoolboy’, as a youngster Terrell did little running outside of prescribed PE sessions. It wasn’t until he was in his early-20s that he took to the sport in any sustained manner.
Originally tackling a two-mile loop close to his home, Terrell was tempted to increase his distance by a friend who was running the Peachtree Road Race in Atlanta.
The race sees more than 50,000 competitors take on a 10km course. It takes place twice a year - once in January and again on American Independence Day (July 4).
“That was the first time I’d run more than two or three miles,” Terrell said, “but it was so much fun. We had an absolute blast because the Peachtree Road Race is the kind of road race anybody can run.
“It’s on the 4th of July here every year, so it’s hot. And people are out there spraying runners with beer, offering you beer, offering you doughnuts, all that sort of thing.
“We ran it as a group, so we would turn around and run backwards for a while. Then we would turn back around. I think I ate a giant doughnut at this grocery store called Publix, which is on Peachtree Street. We just had a ball.”
Terrell enjoyed the race so much that it unlocked something inside of him. When peer pressure came calling again, this time in the form of a friend who was running the Bermuda Marathon, he was all in.
Although running had gripped him by then, it was a race that came with plenty of other incentives: “It was one of those events where if you raise enough money, they pay for you to go.
“They paid for our hotel room and flight. All we had to do was raise a certain amount of money, which in our case was $2,500, and they would just take care of it all.”
Not only that, the deal came with coaches to help participants train properly for the 26.2-mile distance.
“If I had done it on my own, I think I would have quit long before I ever got to the race,” Terrell told Running Tales. “But because we had that structure, and a group of people I could run with on the weekends who could tell me what I needed to be doing, it was awesome.”
Terrell’s first marathon experience came with another unexpected positive in the form of a report in the Bermuda Sun newspaper, which listed every runner along with their bib number.
As participants passed through Hamilton, the capital of Bermuda where the race took place, supporters were able to shout out their names.
Out-ranking Nike and adopting AdSense:
Even though further marathons followed - the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, and the San Diego Marathon - Terrell never imagined running would become such a central part of his life
In fact, he didn’t launch ‘The Half Marathon Guide’ until 2006, a few years after he had finished what was to be his last full marathon.
By that stage, he was still running, enjoying the Peachtree Road Race and other shorter events every year but avoiding the “difficulty” of the longer distances.
“A marathon is such a commitment,” he said, “and I just happened to discover the halves.
“After that third marathon in San Diego, I remember going back to the hotel room and just crashing for six hours. I was only 29 or 30-years-old at the time, but I was beat.
“The half is just a much more manageable distance.”
As manageable as the half-marathon may have been, the proliferation - even saturation - of events we see now didn’t exist at that time. Races certainly weren’t marketed in the way they are now.
“I remember talking to a race director once about this,” Terrell said. “It was really just local people who would come out and run a race every year.
“There was a boom in the early 2000s and 2010s, but back then when I tried Googling races there wasn’t one place to find them. There were all these running clubs in different cities, and they would have local races listed on their own websites.”
The basis of an idea formed in Terrell’s head, suggesting there must be a way to pull all those events together. Fascinated by the arrival of tools such as Google’s AdSense, that thought burgeoned into a business plan.
“I looked around and there was already a site called Marathon Guide,” he said. “And I was like, ‘what about the half’. The domain name was available and I bought it for something like 30 bucks.
“I decided to write these descriptions of the races and include maps and calendars. I added city listings and things like that, and it started to grow over time.”
‘The Half Marathon Guide’ started to appear towards the top of Google’s search results, even ranking top for several half-marathon related search terms.
At one stage, it outranked Nike’s own website when the footwear giant launched its Nike Women’s Half Marathon in San Francisco.
“The traffic would just go into the stratosphere for that whole weekend,” Terrell said, “and then it would come back down on Monday.
“But that showed me the power of this stuff, and what people are searching for and are interested in. I just kept tinkering with it and building it.”
Building community, conversations and running resources:
Central to Terrell’s development of ‘The Half Marathon Guide’ was constant interplay with his audience. By updating details of each race, including course changes and new maps, he was able to become the ‘go to resource’ for many runners.
A regular blog would also attract a host of comments, something he has taken into Substack and ‘The Half Marathoner’.
“What amazes me is how many different runners there are,” he said. “It’s interesting to see all the different things that they do.
“Some of the people I speak to are really into ultras, they’re into really long distances, others are just into halves, or others are just walking.
“I’m not running so much anymore, but I love being connected to this sport and hearing from people who run.
“The running community is so varied, and that’s what’s really interesting, along with the places they’re able to go. That part of it has always been appealing to me. You can go to all these amazing places and go running.
“In Alaska, in Paris, in the Dolomites in Italy, you can go to Antarctica - that’s something that’s so cool for me.”
‘The Half Marathoner,’ which Terrell launched in 2022 after selling ‘The Half Marathon Guide,’ is advertised as a running newsletter that isn’t just about running, with Terrell putting the everyday runner at the heart of his articles and anecdotes.
He writes about everything from goal-setting, parenting and running, and dealing with life changes. The eclectic nature of the newsletter sees it feature a mixture of training plans, Q&As with runners from a host of backgrounds, and a long list of ‘races you’ll love running’ from all around the world.
Central to it all are Terrell’s popular Friday discussion threads, which take the conversation off in a host of different directions, with in-depth chats about upcoming races accompanied with simple questions such as ‘where are you in the world?’ and ‘how is your running going?’.
Ultimately, Terrell has discovered and harnessed the power of something at the heart of why we run: the community running engenders and the conversations it starts.
After all, without those things there’s an excellent chance we’d all have given up running a long time ago.
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Go Terrell! Go!