Reality Check

Hello! Welcome back to Footprint. Happy Friday – and happy August.

💭 Lessons from a(nother) doping scandal, with veteran journalist and 1968 Boston Marathon winner Amby Burfoot, and philosopher and runner Sabrina Little

🧠 Joining the dots between running and mental health, with Still I Run founder Sasha Wolff

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Canadian ultrarunner Ryan Keeping will next month try to run around Iceland faster than anyone has before. The record is 16 days and 10 hours, Jessy Carveth writes for Marathon Handbook • Read

Another Canadian athlete, Corey Bellemore, broke his own record at the 2025 Beer Mile World Classic in Lisbon, Portgual. It’s always challenging, he said • Watch

Theo Kahler was struggling through Grandma’s Marathon in June when volunteers started giving out cups with sponges soaked in water: a lifesaver, he writes in Runner’s World • Read

Now the fastest female marathoner in history has been caught, is it time give up and let athletes dope, Alex Hutchinson asks in Outside • Read

Many Kenyan athletes seeking an edge in running want a way out of poverty, Tariq Panja reports for The New York Times • Read

It wasn’t close. Kenya’s Ruth Chepng’etich tore away from the field at last October’s Chicago Marathon, smashing the world record and becoming the first woman to run a marathon under two hours, ten minutes. Her nearest competitor finished almost eight minutes later. 

Followers of the sport fell into three camps. A small number of people declared she had cheated. A slightly larger group declared it was too soon to declare anything. And then there was the rest of us. 

When the record tumbled in Grant Park last year, the majority of fans neither rebuked Chepng’etich as a cheat, nor celebrated her as a champion. Bewilderment was the prevailing emotion; the awe of an athlete overcoming what was previously thought possible, tainted by a lingering skepticism. 

You didn’t need to know the specifics of this case – an agent with a string of high-profile doping cases, a country with a serious doping problem, and an athlete’s remarkable mid-career performance surge – to be a bit dubious. 

That’s the damage inflicted each time an elite runner wins by cheating. It spoils the race. It deprives clean athletes of the careers they deserve. And it tarnishes the reputation of the sport. 

Every prominent case, from the back-to-back winner of the 2013 and 2014 Boston and Chicago marathons failing a doping test to the 2016 Olympic champion testing positive for EPO, chips away at the faith. 

Unbelievable is a vague word: it can mean either hard to believe, or outright impossible. Chepng’etich’s extraordinary run through Chicago looked incredible nine months ago. It now seems improbable. 

A few weeks ago, the Athletics Integrity Unit revealed Chepng’etich failed a drugs test in March. Hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) is a banned diuretic which can be used as a masking agent for other substances. Samples must have less than 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL) to pass a test. This one had 3,800 ng/mL. 

The fastest female marathoner of all time is provisionally suspended from running, and faces a two-year ban. For now, her world record stands. 

Much of the fallout has centered on the possible consequences for Chepng’etich, and the harm doping inflicts on her competitors. What’s harder to measure is the damage done, time and again, to the credibility of the sport. 

“On one hand, I think it’s great that she was caught, since it clarifies moral norms around doping, and the willingness of governing bodies to hold athletes accountable,” Sabrina Little, a philosopher and former professional runner, told Footprint via email. “It does not matter who you are.” 

But on the other hand, such high-profile cases encourage the unfair assumption that all successful elite athletes must be cheating. “Doping athletes make it difficult to believe anything is real,” said Little. 

Amby Burfoot knows this sport inside out, having won the 1968 Boston Marathon, run dozens more over the years, and spent decades documenting its growth at Runner’s World. He made no secret of his outrage after Chepng’etich set the record last year. 

“The endless questioning is what’s depressing and deadening, and a huge distraction for the sport,” he said in an interview. 

Burfoot expressed frustration about how little is shared around how athletes are tested and paid at big races. “I just feel there’s a virtual complete lack of transparency in the sport,” he told Footprint. “It just seems like a Wild West out there to me.” 

Asked whether it could provide any details around the testing and financing of its elite field, the Chicago Marathon pointed to its initial statement on Chepng’etich’s suspension, which said it would wait for the AIU process to finish before commenting further. 

The race “has and continues to be an advocate for strict anti-doping measures including drug testing procedures and protocols both in and out of competition,” a spokesperson said. 

Marathoning has transformed over the past few decades into a highly professionalized sport. Races that started with a few hundred runners, and offered watches and beer mugs to the fastest finishers, now attract tens of thousands of runners – and reward winners with tens of thousands of dollars. 

But that’s what we can see. Burfoot wants to know more about what we can’t. How sophisticated and thorough is the system for protecting the integrity of a race – and the ability to believe in the competition? 

“There’s always been some degree of cheating in the sport,” said Burfoot. “There’s a long trail of that. But before prize money, there wasn’t much reason for it.” 

The world saw Chepng’etich run 2:09 last October, and win $150,000 in prize and bonus money. What it didn’t see was how organizers tried to ensure she was clean. 

But this case highlights a broader tension – relevant to runners throughout the pack of every marathon – for Little, who suggested recent developments like the evolution of rules around super shoes, and the rise of legal enhancements like bicarb, have blurred the lines of acceptability. 

“These interventions provide a pretty neat explanatory bridge for the person who is trying to ‘explain away’ their doping to themselves,” she said. “If you can add one thing, well, why can’t you add something else? 

“Competition is either about maximizing nature, or it is about overcoming nature. I think we need to collectively decide what the sport is about, or else we are going to lose the sport – seeing a lot more of these doping cases in the future.” 

Olympian Emily Sisson (pictured) – who came second at the 2022 Chicago Marathon, behind Chepng’etich – reflects on still loving the sport, despite frustrations • Apple | Spotify

Exploring the trails, Des Linden crewed Joe ‘Stringbean’ McConaughy at the 2025 Western States Endurance Run – and considers whether she might race it • YouTube

Veteran agent Hawi Keflezighi discusses the highs and lows he’s grappled with over 20 years in running • Apple | Spotify

Sasha Wolff was training for her first marathon a decade ago when she got three words tattooed onto her arm: still I run. Inspired by the Maya Angelou peom Still I Rise, it was a motto which to her symbolized resilience and strength.

“The stigma we faced does not measure up to the atrocities faced by the Black community,” she told Footprint, “but Still I Rise resonated with me because even though I have depression and anxiety, still I run. Still I get out of bed.”

Wolff finished the 2015 Grand Rapids Marathon “a stronger person,” and the following year set up a non-profit. She knew what to call it.

Still I Run is dedicated to promoting the benefits of running for mental health, and supporting people who could gain from running by covering the costs of training. While it helped Wolff after she was briefly hospitalized for depression and anxiety in 2011, she had struggled to find a running group – in her city, state or country – dedicated to mental health.

“And I kept googling,” she said. “I would just hope someone else would start something.”

But they didn’t. So she did.

When you exercise, it typically increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a crucial protein for brain health: like “Miracle-Gro for your brain,” according to Wolff, who pointed to a 2023 study which concluded that running had comparable effects on mental health to antidepressants.

The link between running and mental health, and the benefits, is “just not very widely known,” she said. “You do google searches on running and physical health, and so many things come up; Women’s Health and Runner’s World: ‘How To Achieve The Runner’s Body,’ or ‘Get 5% Body Fat,’ and it’s all, like, do running, running, running.”

But relatively obscure research articles and “things that are hard to read” are “pretty much the only way you can get a lot of information about running and mental health,” she continued. “It just hasn’t been distilled into popular culture yet.”

After she sought treatment, however, running became a key part of Wolff’s mental health toolkit, alongside therapy and medication.

“Sometimes the pieces of the toolkit change,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll be running more, and I’ll take the therapy down, or things are really rough, so I’ll up my medication, I’ll do more therapy, because I just don’t have the stamina to run.”

Still I Run now has 13 chapters across the US, and two Starting Line Scholarship programs, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Pierce County, Washington, to make running less intimidating and expensive for people who could benefit from trying it out.

While mental health has become a more open discussion in recent years, the stigma around mental illness remains, according to Wolff. “Yes, we’re talking about it more,” she said, “but it lingers. And it hurts so many people.”

The organization hopes to set up more chapters and more scholarships, and ultimately boost awareness of the ways running can help.

“While running is not a substitute for professional mental healthcare, it is something good that you can do – especially when mental health services in this country are being limited, every single day,” said Wolff.

🧠 Find out more

FP22 • Pro athlete Drew Hunter and journalist Alex Hutchinson on the untrodden path • Read

FP21 • A matter of time: Faith Kipyegon’s step forward in Paris • Read

FP20 • What Olympian Eilish McColgan learned when she finally ran a marathon • Read

In a lengthy conversation about running and fatness, Beth Smith and Scottee did not struggle to list barriers faced by would-be runners with different body types – from the lack of decent clothes and representation by brands to what other people think, and even say.

Smith’s advice to larger runners is worth sharing with anyone who might be hesitating about their first run.

“Just go out there and try to block out the noise,” she told Runner’s World. “You’re running for your own reasons, whether that’s health, fitness, or trying to make your brain feel better. Just do your own run. Don’t care about what anyone else is saying. And find your people.”