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the lead
running is becoming something you can wear.
a few weeks ago satisfy and adidas threw a party in the arizona desert and called
it the circle pit. a pump track, a hardcore band, a $300 shoe, and a row of
influencers cutting laps in head to toe kit. the internet watched the clips and
called it cringe.
satisfy makes nice stuff. it's expensive, that's a choice, and they sure threw a
party. people noticed. but the thing worth noticing wasn't whether it was cool.
it's where the cool was supposed to come from.
at the circle pit, the scene was the point. the band, the desert, the look, the
shoe. the running was almost the backdrop, a few laps around a pump track.
a few weeks later, across the country, bandit ran their second annual grand prix
in brooklyn. 5k heats all day, 3k finals at night under the lights, a podium and
an afterparty to close it out. that looked cool too. but it looked cool because
people actually raced. the party was the reward for the running, not a replacement
for it.
so you've got two versions of cool showing up in running right now. one puts the
look first and lets the running follow. the other puts the running first and lets
everything else follow from that.
it's the same thing that happened to skateboarding. by the 90s you didn't have to
skate to wear vans. the culture peeled away from the act, and the clothes carried
it on their own. running is heading down that road too. you can buy the whole look
without ever logging a mile.
none of that is good or bad. it's just a fork. which version is worth
buying?
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