Opinion | How to become a badass runner without doing much running (but a lot of online posting)
- Make sure all your friends and family know just how hardcore you are by posting on Instagram in the middle of a race, but avoid including trail markers in the photo
- Who cares if every race ever marketed is called ‘The Toughest’ as long as your non-running friends think this one really is the real deal
You could be forgiven for thinking that trail running is about running. No, those days are long gone. If you want to look like a real runner, and a hardcore one at that, follow these simple tips.
Stay well clear of international marathons. They require no technical gear and yield little to no content for your social media – the best you can hope for is a shot of you showing horrendous running form, face contorted into a grimace of undignified exhaustion. Also, nobody is impressed by a top 5,000 finish.
Instead, go for “Toughest Races in Scary Places”. Antarctica, the Amazon, or any famous desert – they all qualify as scary places. The amount of gear you can attach to yourself during a Toughest Race will make you look ready to colonise Mars. The costs of doing a Toughest Race are equivalent to half-a-year’s wages in a Central European country – this keeps the fast, low-income people out, making sure that you will not suffer the indignity of placing 4,849th again.
In the weeks before the Toughest Race, post photos of the racecourse elevation profiles, adorned with calorie calculations, impressive predicted times and notes on strategy. A coffee cup and your GPS watch must both be visible in the shot.
You don’t actually need to train much before Toughest Races – most have no cut-off times, and so you can apply your time and energy to posting on social media. But if you are a bit of an old-school perfectionist, there are few basic training guidelines.