The craze for running first began to take hold in the late 1960s. Some middle-aged folks started jogging as a way to stave off heart disease, that era’s public health cause célèbre. Others followed the example of Jim Fixx, a running evangelist who told Americans that jogging would help them lose weight and “change their lives” in his million-sellingThe Complete Book of Running. Still others were inspired to begin racing when Frank Shorter, an American, won the gold medal in the 1972 Olympic marathon. An estimated 21 million people — 51% of the national viewing audience — watched Shorter run to victory.
But most people who took up the sport in those years were younger — in their twenties and thirties — and they did so not to race, but as a means to a range of vaguely-countercultural ends: as way to loosen the body, break free of societal strictures, and to dabble in Eastern mysticism. Marathoning also had environmental connotations. One of the first large races outside of the long-running Boston Marathon was the 1970 Earth Day Marathon on Long Island. Looking to capitalize on the jogging trend, major publishers put out books with titles like The Zen of Running and The Psychic Power of Running. “Running,” proclaimed New Times magazine in the mid-1970s, had become “the new high.”
But by the end of the 1970s, a new group of runners began to be drawn to the sport for a new set of reasons. Running took on a different valence as it became popular among young urban professionals — “yuppies,” in the language of the day. Yuppies appreciated the way running helped to maximize their self-potential, but were less enthused about its therapeutic, political, or libidinous benefits. They were similarly skeptical about an open-ended pursuit of “zen.”
Instead of “loosening up” their bodies, this cohort of runners wanted to “tighten up”: to steel themselves for the competitive world of the professional workplace. Running, which once promised self-discovery, now promised self-improvement. In 1982, one fitness instructor summarized the trend. “People want a more vigorous exercise program than they used to. Things used to be nirvana-oriented — getting to know yourself, meditation. But it’s a tougher world today than in the 60s or 70s and people want to toughen up to fight back.”