Exercise makes people feel good

 "Exercise makes people feel good. No wonder they get addicted to it."- Dr William Morgan.
 That is, of course, the addiction we need- a positive one, a self-renewing compulsion to do what is good for us. The difference between running and drugs is the absence of fantasy. The good feeling in and from running is no delusion. It is an accurate perception of what is actually taking place in our whole being- body, mind and spirit.

 Dr. George Sheehan

Runners World- Footloose- Amby Burfoot

Questions and answers with Mary Wittenberg.

Here are a few snippets from our Q &A session with Wittenberg.

RW: What did you think about Ryan Hall's withdrawal from the Chicago Marathon?
Mary Wittenberg: I believe Ryan did the right thing, and I don't think he'll be the only big-name to withdraw from fall marathons. I think there will be another American and an international runner. Ryan has the attitude, which I also fully believe, that he's capable of an out of body race that could win a major marathon. But he felt he wasn't ready for that this fall, so he withdrew. That's smart. I believe Ryan is good enough to win a major on any given day. Yes, the odds are stacked against you with all the great Kenyans and Ethiopians, but I believe that on any given day, maybe four American men and four American women are good enough to win a major marathon.

Having Americans win is the key to the growth of the sport in the U.S. and globally, and that's why we'll always try to have as many top Americans come to New York as we can. I believe Dathan Ritzenhein will win New York one year, though I don't know if it will be this year. We have a recruitment program every year now where we invite top Americans to New York to simply witness the marathon. This year we'll have Lisa Koll, Molly Huddle, Chris Solinsky, Matt Tegenkamp, and Evan Jager. Alberto Salazar won't even let us invite Galen Rupp to New York. He's afraid Galen would get too excited about the marathon.

What did it take to land Haile Gebrsellassie for this year's New York City Marathon?
About 10 years. It was our longest, most challenging recruitment effort. But we kept after it because Haile reflects our philosophy of the sport. We love running, we've always been in running, and we'll always be in running. Haile has been a champion for almost two decades, and we've never seen anyone with his recognition in the sport. His agents have been brilliant. They've carefully guided his long success in the sport.

The last three years or so, I've been telling them and Haile, "Don't wait too long." Haile still believes he can set another world record in the marathon, but that's not something that's going to happen on our course, so it was difficult for him to pull away from the world-record attempts. But he loves New York, and he wanted to race our marathon, and I'm sure he wants to leave a big mark on our race, to set a course record.

Haile is unique. There's just no one like him in our sport. When you're in his orbit, you feel that he has the same kind of pull on people that someone like an Obama has. He's a busy, hands-on executive. Yet he's also the most emotionally intelligent person I've ever met. He always knows what everyone else around him needs. And that smile… it just does not fade away.

Do you ever worry that you'll wake up one Monday morning and find that the marathon boom has evaporated?
Well, I do think it's important to always be aware of threats that could weaken your appeal. But I feel really optimistic right now. In running, we've gone through and come out of a terrible recession, and we're very healthy. During the recession, we talked a lot within the New York Road Runners about how it could affect us. But in 2010 things are stronger than ever, our demographic has gotten a little younger, and we're very optimistic.

Our marathon entries were about 100,000 for a couple of years, but this year they went up 20 percent. This may be because we now allow people to enter the day after the marathon, meaning that all the promotion we pour into the six weeks leading up to the marathon is getting them excited, and then we're letting them enter. We didn't used to do that until spring, which meant we had to start promoting all over again.

The last 10 years, so much of our growth came from women's running, which hasn't even scratched the surface in many places around the world. In the next 10 years, we want to focus on youth fitness–not in pushing kids to enter races, but to put them more in touch with their bodies and how good it feels to be fit and healthy. And then we have to work on diversity in our sport. We haven't done enough for Hispanics and African Americans and other minority groups.

The USATF just fired Doug Logan. Do we have a leadership problem in the sport?
Maybe, but you can also argue that the fragmentation in our sport has been a good thing in that it has led to lots of entrepreneurial success in various niches and regions. I think maybe we had to hit the leadership bottom before we could rebound. I do think it's time for a new direction and more pulling together.

Track and field historically was never very interested in road running, and that's what allowed road running to explode on its own. So I think you could argue that has been a good thing. The decentralization allowed many races to bloom and grow. Now I hope we can pool our common dreams while respecting all the owners of races and programs at all the different levels.

We need someone who can connect the dots. We want to connect unbelievable races like Joanie's race in Maine with the long established Falmouth race on the Cape the next weekend, and so on. The only people who can do this are those of us who work in the sport day after day throughout the year. You can't expect something big from the people who only work on one event a year. Somehow we need to unlock the key to working together. There's no lack of desire among the parties. We just need more relationship building.

Has the World Marathon Majors lived up to your hopes and aspirations?
I'd give us an "A" grade for coming out of the box four years ago. Now I'd say our grade is …. actually, I'd rather not grade us. Getting the five races to work together has been hugely positive, but now it's time to move on to the second stage. We have to figure out if we're just an alliance, or if we're a model that we can build the entire sport around. When you've got five voting members, it's not always easy to get the votes.

Are celebrity runners good for the sport?
The celebrities can do so much for us. They boost our visibility. First, they help us tell the story of the healthy lifestyle. Second, they just get you more eyeballs. Let me use the Fifth Ave. Mile as an example. We had incredibly exciting events this year–as intense as the best boxing and basketball–and we had about 20,000 people watch our live webcast. I thought that was quite good for a first year. But if we could have had Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton, say, running the Fifth Avenue Mile before Alan Webb, that would have helped us promote the event much better.

In the Marathon, we had huge responses to runners like P. Diddy and Lance Armstrong. They help us get coverage before the event, and they help us on race day too. In Lance's case, you had this athlete, one of the most famous in the world, who had declared that he wanted to break 3 hours. And when we pick him up in the telecast, he's on 2:59 pace. That gives us something very rich to work with after the winners have already finished.

When Meb won last year, his American victory was very big for us. He went on the Letterman show and he was at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and those things extend and increase our media. I also think Meb's win was partly responsible for our surge in entries this year. And if Shalane Flanagan could win this November, I think that whole thing would happen all over again.

But there's a very important thing we never lose sight of when we're promoting our celebrities. We love the glamor and the glitz, but we never want to forget that the authenticity of our events is the most important thing. This is what the sport is really about. The simplicity of the sport, the passion that people bring to it, and the rewards they get from it. I think it's very important for major brands to stay focused on their authenticity, and that's certainly a strong ethic at New York Road Runners. We can be super-innovative, and we can have a lot of fun, but we can never lose sight of our authenticity. I think some running shoe companies have moved away from this, and it has hurt them.

Is there anything related to our sport that you worry a lot about?There's the issue of whether or not we will all pull together with each other. It's okay that we have so many different organizations in this big country. I respect all of them. I just hope we're strong enough to all pull together.

Do you worry that entry fees might go too high?
Yes, I have a huge fear of the cost issue. We need the money to promote the events, the athletes, the streaming web sites and other media. And we believe in premium pricing for premiere events like the Marathon. But we also have reasonable-cost events almost every weekend, and we are also committed to free programs. It's all a matter of the proper balance.