Running Makes It Real

There's this hill.
We won't name names, but it's a certain hill that starts right around mile 2.5 on the Supervictory ATL chapter morning route. Now this hill is, to put it diplomatically, a motherfucker. It is long, it is steep and it is merciless. And lately some of us (again, no names) have been avoiding this beast.

Maybe it's the fact that even at 7am it's already 80 degrees in this part of the country. Maybe it's the sense of entitlement that comes from just recently having gotten back to full strength after some nagging injuries. Maybe it's just plain laziness. Whatever the reason, we've been avoiding this hill.

And the more we avoid it, the larger it looms.
One of these days, we say to ourselves, we're gonna have to buck up and run the thing. One of these days, we're gonna have to go to bed an hour earlier, and put a little extra peanut butter on our pre-run bagel, and maybe even carry a bottle of water with us. But one of these days, we will have to run up this hill.

That day came today.
And guess what, it wasn't anywhere near the beatdown that we'd been dreading.
We simply took it easy, and tried not to think about it. And when the time came when we could've turned away, we didn't. We just looked at each other and nodded.

We ran the hill. And now it doesn't loom quite as large.
Running the hill took it down a notch from myth status, and made it real.
Running makes it real.

-SV

Run Positive

Yesterday.
Beautiful sunny cool morning run before firing up the Supervictory machine for another day. 3 miles in I realize I've spent the last 3 miles worrying about my flat feet, and my tweaked knee, and how long before I injure myself again, and what kind of distance dreams will die along the way.

And then...
I pretty much had to slap myself across the face and say:
Hey Idiot, you've spent the last 3 miles of this beutiful cool morning WORRYING about running instead of enjoying it. It made me question the power of mind over matter, and whether thinking injury-free can actually help keep you there.

I don't know.
But why not?
It can't hurt.

Summer of '77

Thanks to John R. for this gem depicting some old school punks limbering up for Atlanta's Peachtree Road Race on July 4th 1977. Note the go-to-hell slogan on homey's singlet. When the Supervictory apparel line is launched, rest assured that'll be the first jam we print.

NRD

National Running Day.
Act like you know.

Thought of the day

Having legs fuckin' rules!

Y'know?
Sometimes it's hard to put on your shoes and get yourself out the door.
But then you do, and you get out there and you start running, and you're like...
having legs fuckin' rules!
It totally beats not having legs.

Just sayin'.

-SV

The Whole Fixie Thing

Here at our bustling Supervictory world headquarters, there's one thorny topic in particular that keeps coming up lately; the whole fixie thing.

Some of us in the office have ridden them, some of us haven't. But there's no denying that it's gotten way out of hand. Now look, we want be real careful not to turn this into an anti-hipster rant, because that's not what we're about. We're about being positive, and about doing your own thing.

The problem is, that with the recent popularity explosion of these bikes, we have to ask ourselves: Are the kids really doing their own thing? Or are they just getting on the bandwagon on because it's THE thing?

Now, shit. The same thing happened with skating.
There was a time when riding a skateboard could get you beaten up.
The same thing happened with surfing and BMX.
Now they're all multimillion dollar industries.

And now that we're talking about it, we realize that the same thing happened with running. Yeah, that's right. Back in the day only boxers and weirdos ran, and people thought they were fucking lunatics. Then in the 70's and 80's the whole thing blew up and everybody started running. Now it's a multimillion dollar industry.

So, I guess we just settled our own discussion.
Everything is underground and cool for a while, until it catches on, blows up and becomes a multimillion dollar industry.

So the Supervictory verdict is in:
Fixies are okay.
But real punks run.

-SV

We're Number 3! We're Number 3!

Well Boston is over, and American hopefuls Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher did not win. BUT THEY BOTH CAME IN 3rd!!! 3rd place at Boston! How killer is that? They trained their asses off, they ran hard on race day, and they both came in 3rd.

Now, we here at Supervictory would've been stoked if either of them had won, but at the end of the day we really don't care. We're just stoked that we still have underdogs to root for. And in all seriousness, let's have a big SV hats off to men's winner Deriba Merga of Ethipia (2:08:42), women's winner Salina Kosgei from Kenya (2:32:16) and everybody else who went out and helped make Boston one of running's most legendary events.

Rock on.
-SV