Table of contents for Winter 2024 in Runner's World

ANDRII TKACHUK KNELT BEHIND A LINE OF BUSHES, an antitank gun perched on his shoulder, awaiting a convoy of Russian troops. It was eerily quiet; there was no wind, no birdsong. Just empty fields. He looked through the weapon’s sight and steadied himself. He had never fired this gun before, and couldn’t afford to miss. Tkachuk isn’t a trained soldier. He’s a runner, and not just any runner: He’s one of the world’s greatest ultramarathoners. He signed up for active duty after Russia invaded his native Ukraine in late February 2022, and a few days later, on March 1, he marched toward Zaporizhizhia in southeast Ukraine with the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade. While he was familiar with the suffering that can come while running 200 kilometers or more, he was…

with Cindy Le, a member of the Koreatown Run Club in Los Angeles, who started running in 2020 as a way to cross-train for backpacking. Up next? Her first 100K trail race. LET ME EXPLAIN (1) I fell in love with running by training for my first marathon with Koreatown Run Club, and now I’ve gained a group of friends ready and willing to take on all sorts of crazy adventures with me. (2) Speed workouts are like sharp bursts of ambition, fleeting and electric. But the long run offers a chance to reflect. You get to experience the world and your city at a human pace. (3) I like how the focus of training is on growth and not just achievement. It gives you the bravery to do something a…

DURING THE PARIS Olympics, Brodie Kane, a podcaster from New Zealand, posted a video to Instagram, railing against safety pins. The post garnered more than 11,000 likes and 750 comments. In the video, she asked, “Why are the greatest athletes on Earth still having to safety-pin their clunky race bibs to their race outfits?” Claiming technology and aerodynamics as factors, she closed, “Why are they doing this still at the Olympics? Make it make sense.” In my world, it does make sense. Safety-pinning a number to your shirt is a time-honored tradition in running, done at every level from tot trots to pro races. A decade ago, my daughter ran her first fun run as a 2-year-old; two pins affixed a comically large bib (no. 312) that covered her green tank…

361 DEGREES 361-ELEOS Price: $145 Type: Cushioned Trainer Weight: 9.2 oz (M), 7.5 oz (W) Drop: 6 mm THE ELEOS MAY have been the biggest surprise of 2024. And, if we were giving out a “Best Buy” award, this one would be a front-runner because of the shoe’s combination of versatility and cost. It’s a chunky-looking shoe, with an exceptionally broad slab of foam, but don’t be deceived by the appearance. In testing, we found the shoe to be relatively lightweight, well-balanced, and incredibly lively underfoot. Our testers favorably compared it to the Asics Superblast 2, as much for its looks as for its performance. But while that shoe is firmly in “illegal” territory with a heel stack height of just over 45mm (World Athletics caps a shoe’s height at…

IT WAS A hot summer afternoon on Cold Soil Road, and I had just finished the “First Speed Run,” a guided run in the Nike Run Club app. It included eight one-minute intervals interspersed with one minute of recovery. The virtual coach of that run prescribed different speeds, including a mile pace which was “fast,” a 10K pace which was “faster, but slower than a mile pace,” and the slowest of the three, a marathon pace. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t run at different paces. Over the course of my various flirtations, romances, and relationships with running, I’d always seemed to move at only two speeds: run and walk. Disappointed and discouraged, I checked to see the name of the next guided run, hoping it wouldn’t force…

THIRTEEN YEARS AGO, before she had 10 sponsors, running records that appear as if they will stand for decades (or until she breaks them), hundreds of thousands if not millions of fans, and an article of clothing named after her, Courtney Dauwalter was a 25-year-old, junk-food-eating eighth-grade science teacher living in Denver. She had recently taken up trail running, had completed a 50-mile race, then had heard about an event called the Run Rabbit Run 100-miler. “It sounded insane,” she says. “I had to try.” About 50 miles into the 2012 Run Rabbit Run 100 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, she realized just how insane the race was. It was raining, and she was cold, and sick, and tired. Everything hurt. She spent miles vomiting. The guy she was dating at…

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