What’s that? You’re not yet famous in the running world? Don’t despair: You can still claim your allotted 15 minutes if you learn to play by the rules.
What will you become famous for? That doesn’t really matter. Runner, guru, training expert, author…take your pick. (The ideal, of course, is to become famous for being famous, sort of the John F. Kennedy Jr. of running.) We’ll leave it to you to pick a niche and decide how you’ll occupy it.

What matters far more is that you learn how to conduct yourself so that, once famous, you stay that way. Think of your pursuit as riding a bobsled. Inertia is powerful foe, so initially, you’ll have to work quite hard. Once you attain some momentum, however, the ride will take care of itself, in part because you’ll find friends on board to lean on. Things will go astray only if you refuse to go with the flow and seek other than the well-greased rut.

Famous baseball figures have it easy. As Nuke LaLoosh learned in "Bull Durham," he could handle pretty much any matter with one of three statements:

• We gotta play ’em one day at a time.
• I’m just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ballclub.
• I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out.

Running is a simpler activity than playing baseball, the flip side of which is that its rules for the renowned are greater, subtler and, in some cases, contradictory. It’s not expected that you’ll master all of the following prescriptions. Indeed, for most people, attempting to do so is downright dangerous, calling as they do for mental acrobatics worthy of St. Ignatius of Loyola, who convinced himself that the white he saw was black if the pope decreed it so. Reaching this state of samadhi is best left for the biggest of cheeses, such as heads of national organizations. Initially, you should focus on internalizing a few of the rules, then add others as your needs expand and your spine shrinks.

To be famous in running today, it helps to think and say the following:

Assume that bigger is always better.
More, more, more. More ratings, more media coverage, more people in more races all the time. The more popular something is, the more merit it has. Is this not self-evident? Is questioning this not un-American?

For example, celebrate races that reach their several-thousand-runner limit months before the event as unambiguous evidence of the health of the sport. When you’re asked how many of the entrants never made it to the start line because they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into, brush the question aside by predicting that next year’s race will fill even sooner, and ain’t that swell!

You’ll want to avoid mentioning golf when highlighting the unsullied worth of any and all media attention. Avoid pointing out that, while Tiger Woods will soon replace Teddy Roosevelt on Mount Rushmore and the sport enjoys ever-increasing TV coverage, its participation numbers are stagnant over the last decade. Remember that the sport to mention in all how-running-can-turn-itself-around analogies is men’s professional basketball.

Important note: More is more doesn’t apply to mileage. See "When giving training advice…." below.

Always be willing to sacrifice purity for the sake of "promoting the sport," then chastise balkers as living in the past.
To satisfy the more-is-better dictate, make whatever concessions are called for—employ rolling starts at marathons, encourage pro-wrestling-like, made-for-TV match races, create whole events while working from a theme park aesthetic, etc. Devote much of your time to getting the media to play up this or that unique angle. Leave details like ensuring that 4:15 marathoners have water at the 19-mile mark for lesser visionaries.

Pooh-pooh any critiques of your approach as coming from people who just don’t get it. Use marketing buzzwords to show how au courant you are and to emphasize that, unlike your critics, you know that running must adapt or die. Be sure to use the word "entertainment" at least every third paragraph to contrast your approach to your "product" with that of the old-schoolers who are ignorant of the reality of the marketplace.

Concerning TV coverage, always support the most dumbed-down version as necessary to draw in "casual fans." Promise that in a not-too-distant future, when this kind of coverage becomes really popular, people will suddenly start clammering for extensive coverage of 10,000 meter races. Be willing to ask rhetorically, "Would you rather that there be no running on TV?" at the slightest objection.

At the same time, you’ll want to master saying, "Americans are never going to watch all of a 5K; you’re just going to have to get used to it." The preferred tone here is that of Al Gore in his more pedagogic moments, as if you’re repeating instructions to a dull child for the third time. Be sure not to draw attention to the increasing incidence of longer races being dropped from track meets to make the meets more TV-friendly. And certainly don’t point out how, because of the dearth of high-quality longer track races in the U.S., there are fewer developmental opportunities for up-and-coming distance runners, thereby adding to the chances of the public never having reason to care about them.

Adopt the attitude that any attention to the sport is good.
This is a corollary to the first two rules. Here, the important thing is to convince yourself that distasteful means naturally produce worthwhile ends, much as when the Christian right supports politicians whose stands they abhor in the hope of a change of heart after the election.

For example, say that while you prefer that athletes not talk trash or become known mainly for questionable personality quirks, and that while, ideally, potential spectators and fans should be attracted by the competition and the drama and all that, you recognize that the more superficial aspects often engender public interest. That interest leads to more exposure, more money, and a more marketable product. As we’ve seen, that’s what matters.

Note that this means you’ll also want to praise local newspapers for listing race results without times, and that you’ll want to come out in favor of local TV stations showing three seconds of from-the-shin-down shots when world-class road races occur in your town.

When giving training advice, never tailor what brought you success to others’ circumstances.
This one calls for a thesis/antithesis approach of Hegelian proportions: You’ll want to list your running accomplishments so that people will listen to you, but you’ll want to recommend training that’s nearly the opposite of what brought you those accomplishments. For example, if you made the Olympic team by training with Frank Shorter, tell people that the best way to break 2:39 in the marathon is to alternate running 5:40 pace and walking briskly. Similarly, if you were the top American finisher at Boston long ago because of combining hard speedwork with high mileage, describe running 70 miles a week as "excessive." Say about hard training, "That’s all fine and good for the fast people, but for you…" Present telling people what they want to hear as a principled position.

Emphasize the law of diminishing returns, such as that there are much bigger gains in fitness in going from 25 to 40 miles a week than in going from 60 to 75 miles a week. Don’t mention that, despite this law, nearly all of the world’s best marathoners regularly do much more than that. Simply ignore the fact that some people, regardless of their lack of speed, might be interested in pursuing their potential to its end and therefore willing to run another 25 miles a week to improve by 2 percent.

Stress repeatedly how you would be so much easier on yourself if you had it to do all over again. Emphasize the fundamental importance of rest. Drop the word "overtraining" menacingly into all your training advice. Describe it as a "syndrome" and give a laundry list of "symptoms" that, like horoscopes for hopeful readers, can apply to anyone who wants to believe. Never distinguish between the residual fatigue that accompanies hard training and the dregs of overtraining. Once or so a year—December often works well—say how the Kenyans take a month off from running at the end of their competitive cycle. (Be sure not to prescribe their training methods of, say, a month before the World Cross Country Championships.)

Talk about elite runners as if they’re of another species and as if everything comes easily to them. This helps to maintain the divide between how they train and how you’re telling people to train. Present elites’ training with faux-funny headlines like "Don’t try this at home," and then simply list the workouts without putting them in the context of the elites’ race paces. This increases intimidation and decreases understanding of how to apply their principles to the less genetically gifted.

Locally, you’ll want to describe as "elite" the top, say, 10 percent of race finishers. Here, too, your goal is create confusion about what it takes to be even a slightly larger-than-average fish in a small pond. Whenever possible, give the impression that these "elites" don’t face the same challenges of balancing running with work, family, social life, motivational obstacles, etc. as everyone else.

Always have a ready example handy of how you’re able to keep running in perspective.
Even though most of your professional and social life is tied up in running, you’ll want to present yourself as well-rounded. Tell how you used to run "no matter what," but then you started taking off a few days a week to spend more time with your family, "and that’s okay." Tell the story in such a way that anyone who doesn’t do similarly should feel guilty. You’ll also want to occasionally detail how a crisis—your child was sick, the cat was missing, the sewer line busted, etc.—made you realize "what’s really important." Again, you’ll want to tell this story so that anyone who sought stress relief with a 30-minute run in similar circumstances could be viewed only as unhealthfully obsessive.

While downplaying the importance of running, talk to your audience as if running permeates every second of their existence.
This is best achieved by statements—some call them "jokes"—about when it’s proper to wear race T-shirts, eating pasta for breakfast and, of course, some pun on the word "fartlek." When truly inspired along these lines, collect your observations and offer them in a series of one-liners under the rubric, "You know you're a runner when..."

Always characterize substantive disagreement as personal attack.
Discount the notion that reasonable people could reach a conclusion other than yours. Because your positions will so often be Panglossian, this is best achieved by using words like "naysayer" or "negative" to classify those who disagree with you. Disregard the American tradition of honorable dissent by saying, "If you can’t say something good, then you’re part of the problem." Get others to ask, "Famous Running Person X doesn’t criticize you, so why do you have to attack him?"

In this regard, you’ll want to master the use of the word "elitist" as a putdown, best said with an air of dismissive derision. Cast yourself as a friend of "the real people." (It’s helpful if, as described above, you can portray those who differ with you as ignorant of the constraints that the workaday world can place on running.) This can be difficult, because you’ll have to avoid treating the masses in a patronizing way; more accurately, you’ll have to avoid being perceived as treating the masses in a patronizing manner. (See above for increasing TV ratings for running by appealing to the great unwashed.)

Discard as elitist any positions that hold running to be primarily a performance-based sport. Always elevate running for a higher purpose—for charity, to the memory of someone, to make a statement, to prove such and such to so and so, etc. Always praise all runners who talk in this way. An important stock phrase here is, "I don’t see Libbie Hickman being upset by (topic du jour)."

At least once a week, greet a recurrent offering in running with the statement, "Finally, something for the back of the packer."

Say that races wouldn’t exist if not for the second boomers.
Lead people to believe that running wasn’t a thriving sport 20 years ago. Because you’ll be promoting the idea that more is always better, you’ll want others to think that races weren’t worth running when 500 entries was a large field.

Similarly, say how the people finishing at the front of races wouldn’t look good if there weren’t a lot of people finishing behind them. Ignore how the winners of the Olympic Marathon Trials look in 100-person races among closely matched runners.

Smile.
Remember, it is better to look good than to feel good.

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