Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Recover Those Old Runner's World Magazines

A couple of weeks ago a fellow runner gave me a box of old Runner's World magazines and booklets. Let me just say that Christmas came early as my Runner's World collection goes back to 1975 or so. These are black and white issues from the early 70's. Not only that but there were plenty of those old Runner's World booklets, year end yearbooks, and Olympic recap magazines. I had only bought a couple of the booklets when I was in high school and I have been kicking myself since. I have always wanted to read Ron Daws' "The Self Made Olympian" or any of the other biographies: Jack Foster, Frank Shorter, Dave Wottle, George Young, and Gerry Lindgren . Take a look at all that I have to read. I consider myself a lucky guy and thank the runner who wanted to give these away rather than throw them away!





Fortunately I have had time to read through a few of the books and flip through the magazines already. Unfortunately it was due to losing electricity for 5 days because of the ice storm. Here is a video of the damage around our house from all the branches and trees that fell.


5 comments:

Hal said...

Hello, Jim. I found you through a Google search.

See, I'm looking for a scan/pic of a particular back cover of an issue of RW, I just don't know the specific one it is.

Remember between 1978 and 1981, when Nike got a bit pissy about a shoe issue where they didn't think RW was fair to them, and they then dropped their long-time back cover ad? Then Brooks took it over for a while, doing a number of funny ads. The one I'm looking for has Khrushchev at the UN, banging his shoe at the podium. The text on the top is in Cyrillic/Russian. The text at the bottom says, "Sometimes the right shoe can make all the difference in the world," or close to it. (True story: My cross-country coach at the time was a native speaker of Russian. So I asked him what the Cyrillic said. He looked, and then started laughing for a long time. When he caught his breath: "These shoes are killing me!")

Anyway... I know the issue would be in that 1978-1981 timeframe, and since it's it's the back cover, I'd think it'd be easy to shuffle through... But if you don't have the time or inclination, I can understand. It's just I'd like to post the story above to my blog, and have an image of the cover to illustrate it.

Thanks in advance,

-- Hal

Jim Hansen said...

Hi Hal,
I did take a look through a big box of old Runner's World issues. I do remember when Nike stopped advertising. Unfortunately I didn't find that back cover. I did get rid of a bunch of issues so maybe that is why I can't find it. I may have some other issues lying around in other boxes. I will be on the lookout for it.
Seeing some of my old time favorite Nikes advertised on the back of RW gave me an idea for a blog post.
Jim

Jim Hansen said...

Hey Hal,
What is you blog?
Is it on running?
Jim

Hal said...

My main blog's at:

http://libertango.livejournal.com/

It's not about running, since I haven't been running in... far too long. But I had wanted to do a post about those days, and was just trying to find that image.

It's a particulary strange ad, if one thinks about it, because there wasn't any translation. Very funny if one knew, but if not, just a smile at best.

Anyway, thanks for your time and help.

Hal said...

In case anyone gets here by Google (as I just did... I'd forgotten about the previous posts):

It's the June 1981 issue of RW. A picture of the ad of Khrushchev at the UN, saying, "These shoes are killing me." may be found at the link.