Running Is Battling a Culture Problem That Sneakerheads Can Relate To. Meet the Man Documenting It.
What the run club boom, the carbon plate revolution, and a $300 shoe say about where culture is headed
I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it... people are more interesting than products.
Raziq Rauf is a good example of what I mean by that.
He started in music journalism. BBC. The Guardian. The kind of writing career most people in that world are chasing. Then, somewhere along the way, running became the thing, not just something he did to clear his head, but something he needed to understand. So he started a newsletter called Running Sucks, built a community around it, became a USATF certified coach, and eventually wrote a book that releases this week, This Is Running, a cultural history of running in the 21st century.
When I heard what the book was actually about, I knew I needed to get him on the Sneaker History Podcast.
Modern running has its own version of everything sneaker culture has. The gear obsession. The community rituals. The tension between grassroots authenticity and brand money coming in to sponsor it all. The moment when a performance product crosses over into something people wear because of what it says about them, not just what it does for them.
Nobody connects those dots the way Raz does.
And before you click away because running isn't your thing... I started the conversation by telling Raz I have a love/hate relationship with running myself. So this isn't a conversation between two running obsessives. It's something way more interesting than that. Our conversation felt like I was just barely breaking the surface of the perspective found in his book.
One of the things that stuck with me from our conversation was his framing of run clubs. They exploded out of the pandemic... people who’d been isolated for two years finally had somewhere to go, and running gave them a reason to show up. To me, that signals the same energy that was driving sneaker culture in the early Sole Collector days, people finding each other around a shared obsession, building community before the brands arrived to package it.
And then the brands do arrive. That’s where it gets complicated, in running, just like in sneakers. Raz is thoughtful about it. He’s not anti-brand, but he’s clear-eyed about what changes when a grassroots community becomes a marketing channel. I’ve written about this from the sneaker side in The Tweet That Paid Off 15 Years Later... authentic community recognition is the most powerful marketing a brand can do, and it only works if it’s actually authentic.
We also got into super shoes, carbon plate technology, and whether performance running footwear can cross over culturally the way basketball shoes did. The Nike Alphafly showing up at fashion week is the kind of data point that would feel random if you weren’t paying attention to how this stuff moves. I’ve been watching the running category quietly eat into lifestyle for a couple of years now, and the numbers are starting to show it, as I wrote in The Nike Turnaround Is Real. It’s Just Not Happening Everywhere. Running is one of the few places Nike is genuinely winning right now.
But the part of this conversation I keep coming back to is simpler than all of that. Raz talked about running without headphones. Finding yourself in the silence. The ideas that come when you’re not consuming anything, just moving. He mentioned a study that found physical movement gives you sixty percent more creative ideas. I believe it. Some of my best newsletter angles have come from a walk, not a desk.
That’s the kind of observation you don’t get from a product review or a trend report. You get it from someone who came to running from a different direction, brought a journalist’s instincts with them, and spent years thinking about what the activity actually means to people beyond the splits and the gear.
That’s exactly the kind of guest I want on this show.
The full episode is on Sneaker History wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube.
This Is Running is available now. Buy the book on Amazon here or support your local bookstore by ordering from Bookshop.org.
Find Raziq on Substack at Running Sucks and on Instagram at @RunningSucks101.
I’m Nick Engvall, and I’ve been writing about sneakers and culture for two decades, from Sole Collector Magazine to building Eastbay’s first blog to being employee #9 at StockX. I run Sneaker History (website and podcast) and write The Sneaker Newsletter... the people, the stories, and the business of sneakers. If you want the deeper stuff... the industry analysis, the “From the Vault” stories from inside the business... become a paid subscriber.
Thanks so much for your incredibly kind words, Nick. I dig what you're doing very, very much. I look forward to seeing where you can take it!