Hello! Welcome back to Footprint – and happy Friday.
This week’s mantra? Be more Bob Becker.
EDITION #22
🧭 Journalist and runner Alex Hutchinson on the power of exploration
💡 Pro track athlete Drew Hunter on doing things differently
💭 How Fauja Singh, reputedly the world’s oldest marathoner, who died this week, thought about the distance
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Bank of America Chicago Marathon / Kevin Morris
❌ DOPING SUSPENSION
Ruth Chepngetich, the first woman to run a marathon in under 2 hours and 10 minutes, has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for a banned substance • Read
🇮🇳 RUNNING BOOM
Running is rapidly on the rise in India. What’s driving it? What’s missing? Lee Glandorf reports in the The Sweat Lookbook • Read
💵 TRACK TRAVAILS
Investors poured tens of millions into track in a bid to capitalize on Paris 2024. They’ve seen mixed results, Dennis Young writes for Front Office Sports • Read
🇯🇲 FINAL SPRINT
After pulling out of the Olympics, and what was slated to be her final race, Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is back. Emily Abbate reports for Marie Claire • Read
🏔️ STEP BY STEP
Your body can always do more than you think it can, writes Sarah Lavender-Smith, after an extraordinary 46-hour slog to finish Hardrock Hundred • Read
AN EXPLORER’S GUIDE
Something You Don’t Already Know
Felicity Autumn
Running through the streets of Paris last month, Alex Hutchinson got lost. He had set out without a predetermined route, using the rough locations of Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower and the Seine to navigate the city.
Getting lost wasn’t the plan. But it also wasn’t a setback. It was just part of the journey.
Hutchinson pulled out his phone, got his bearings, and eventually found his way back to his hotel. “Life went on,” he told Footprint.
He has no regrets. Running is more enjoyable after “deliberately injecting some exploration,” in his view, be that by setting a race goal, mixing up your training, or touring the French capital without slavishly checking Google Maps.
Hutchinson has written The Explorer’s Gene, a book about how humans are, and long have been, fundamentally drawn to exploration – and how to do it better. He is also an avid runner, a former athlete for the Canadian national team, and a veteran journalist who writes Outside magazine’s Sweat Science column.
There are hundreds of millions of runners around the world. Ignore the stereotypes: this group is not monolithic. Anyone can lace up a pair shoes and start running, for any reason.
But Hutchinson, 49, believes runners who explore – embracing novelty and uncertainty – are more likely to keep at it. “For those who stick with running, I think that you start to find a more common core,” he said. “There has to be something you don’t already know when you set out the door.”
Since the 1970s, decision scientists have studied a framework known as explore-exploit, whereby people choose between exploring something new or exploiting something they know.
Do I take the same trip each summer to Monterey, California, or head somewhere different? Do I watch yet another episode of Friends tonight, or try a new show? Do I stay in journalism, or drop out to open a bakery?
Exploring is often the riskier move, and may well lead somewhere worse than the alternative. Monterey is hard to beat. A few episodes in, I might realize the new show sucks. And I’m not that good at baking.
But there is also a chance that exploration yields rewards. I could land upon a series more worthy of my attention than watching Friends for the ninth time. And I could get good at baking, and build an empire on sourdough and cinnamon buns.
In running and beyond, the untrodden path can be literal or figurative: exploring is as much about trying something as it is going somewhere.
Several times a week, Hutchinson runs the same route around the neighborhood where he grew up. He has been running it since he was 15. When his kids were very young, he found himself leaning even more towards the same runs and races.
“I would still argue there’s an element of exploration every time I run a race,” he said. “I don’t know how it’s going to go.”
Exploration, in whatever form it might take, is typically a key part of running over time, according to Hutchinson.
“There are people for whom running probably doesn’t play an exploratory role. They go out and run three days a week; their usual thing,” he said. “They’re doing it because they want to get fit. They don’t have any aspirations. They’re not trying to qualify for anything, not trying to run a certain time. They don’t race. They don’t push themselves hard.
“Running to them is like brushing their teeth. It’s something they do to stay healthy. And some people will do that for 60 years. Not many people will do that for 60 years.”
But people who run for longer than a few years “by and large, go beyond just that toothbrushing routine,” he added. They explore.
Writing The Explorer’s Gene, Hutchinson did not conclude exploration is always the better choice. Exploiting what you already have, and know, “is absolutely not just the right thing, but essential, in some contexts,” he said.
“I’ve always sort of liked to think of myself as an exploratory person. It’s not obvious. I’m actually risk averse in a lot of ways,” said Hutchinson. “But I’ve liked to think that I take chances, and try new things, and set ambitious goals.
“I think writing the book helped me reflect on what it is I’m looking for when I’ve got this urge to explore. If I’m wondering what’s on that hilltop up there, it’s not that I’m literally wondering what it would be like to stand on that hilltop. I’m wondering what it would be like to get to that hilltop.”
In other words: it’s about the journey, not the destination.
“You can hear that cliché an infinite number of times... without it feeling real,” he said. “I’ve become, and I’m trying to become, much more conscious of what it feels like to be uncertain, to not know how the story’s going to end – to be on a trail, and not to know everything about the trail in advance.”
This means knowing enough to figure out the way forward – but not too much, “so that I can be surprised by what I find.”
📺 15 YEARS STRONGER
Mountain athlete Kilian Jornet (pictured) documents his return to Western States, 15 years after racing it for the first time • YouTube
🎧️ KEEP HAMMERING COLLECTIVE
📺 LOOKING FOR THE BAD TIMES
Ultra runner Holly Stables takes on The Speed Project, the unsanctioned 300-miler from LA to Vegas, over three grueling days • YouTube
INTERVIEW • DREW HUNTER
Uncharted Territory
Sound Running
Something happened to Drew Hunter on Saturday night. When the bell rang under the lights of LA’s Jack Kemp Stadium, and the last lap of the Sunset Tour 1500m began, he was towards the back of the pack. Until he wasn’t.
“Here comes Hunter,” declared the commentator, as he accelerated out of nowhere. Just as others flagged, he found another gear – overtaking each racer, one by one.
Driving home on the straightaway, a brief glance behind revealed just how far he’d pushed past the competition. Hunter lifted his arms in the air as he broke the tape, finishing faster than he ever had before: 3:33.41.
It was a kick for the ages. But Hunter has done his fair share of thinking about final laps.
“This might be the last leg of my running career,” he told Footprint. “And I would hate to just do another four years of the same thing, and then be like, well I guess I’m done.”
Almost a decade has passed since Hunter, 27, was signed out of high school by Adidas. He swiftly showed promise, clinching victories including the US two-mile indoor national title in 2019, before some difficult setbacks.
He was forced by injury to miss the US Olympic Trials in 2021. And at last summer’s Trials, he finished fourth in the 10,000m: one spot away from qualification for Paris.
Starting this season with a new sponsor, Asics, and a new training setup, he decided it was time to explore. Veering off track to hit the road, he raced April’s Cherry Blossom 10-Miler in Washington, DC, and May’s BOLDERBoulder 10K in Colorado for the first time.
Gone are the days when Hunter was all-in on one surface, and distance, throughout the year. “I really just wanted to do things I was excited about this year,” he said. “And I wanted to do things differently than most of the guys I’m competing against.”
It seems to be working well. Returning to the track, Hunter also won the 5,000m at Portland Track Festival (with another impressive bell lap) in June. He will race the 5,000m and the 10,000m at the US national championships later this month.
“My relationship with running has changed so much since I started,” he said. “I have to do things that keep me excited when I wake up in the morning. Most of those things, believe it or not, they’re not necessarily anti-track: they’re just things I haven’t done yet.”
If he could go back and talk to himself, just as he was starting out, he would suggest shifting focus beyond the big races. Some of the most impactful things Hunter has done in running – like co-founding the Tinman Elite pro team – were “actually outside of running fast,” he said.
“Sometimes I felt like it was the end of the world if I wasn’t performing and running well, and injuries and setbacks really sort of crippled me,” Hunter continued. “I wish I could just tell myself [back then] to lean into your teammates and other people.
“I think it would have been a lot more palatable of a career. I probably wouldn’t have had so many super low lows, and high highs that came crashing down.”
His perspective has been shifted not just by these highs and lows, but the arrival of his two daughters. “Running can be very selfish... There’s a part of you that can wall off others to be a good runner,” said Hunter. “With kids you can’t do that anymore, because you have to give them everything.”
Parenting has given his running as much as it has taken, he stressed. The sport is no longer just teaching him; he wants his daughters to understand its lessons, too.
“I’m not going to win every race. I’m gonna fail. But I can work incredibly hard at something, and I can show them what perseverance looks like,” he said. “I can show them what hard work looks like.
“And I can also just show them that there are things that will light your heart on fire in this life, and you should lean into those things. For me that’s running. And maybe for my kids it might be something different.”
Nike
ONE LAST THING…
Fauja Singh, who claimed to be the world’s oldest marathon runner, aged 114, died this week in Beas Pind, India.
Guinness World Records was unable to verify the record, his New York Times obituary noted, as Singh was unable to provide a birth certificate. But the exploits of a man dubbed the Turbaned Tornado consistently amazed onlookers around the world.
“The first 20 miles are not difficult,” he told reporters of the marathon, back in 2004. “As for last six miles, I run while talking to God.”