U.S. presidents give a State of the Union report each year. Many governors give a State of the State address on an annual basis to keep the citizens apprised of how well or badly things are going, the report usually tilted toward matters fiscal.

Each year in July, the “State of the Sport” of running is released by USATF’s Road Running Information Center. The report concentrates on three specific areas: the industry, the participant, and the road race.

Unlike many such reports, which are comparable to slogging through oatmeal, the USATF State of the Sport report is relatively easy reading.

It’s always fun before reading the results of the report to jot down some notes of our own based on our personal observations from having attended races within the previous year and from communicating with a variety of folks within the sport to see how our own observations square with the “official” observations that are based on firm numbers. In other words, is intuition stat friendly?

Sometimes we’re off a bit. Other times we’re right on the money. This year it was a little of both.

First, our suppositions based on purely unscientific observations:

1. Sales of running shoes and apparel were pretty much static.

2. New Balance made some inroads into the American shoe market with some aggressive marketing, but Nike clearly dominated as it has in the past, especially since within the last few years Nike has been once again paying some attention to its running origins.

3. The demographics of the American runner stayed pretty much what they have been for the past few years. Growth in participation has slowed if not stopped.

4. Marathon participation rose, but not at the 10 percent per year it did in the past.

5. There are way too many new races, and the new races are seriously cutting into the health of existing races.

Here is the reality of the numbers versus the assumptions of intuition.

1. Zap! Wrong! According to SGMA (Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association), sports apparel experienced a slight decline in 2003. The NSGA (National Sporting Goods Association) “also documented a decline in the purchase of athletic and sport clothing from 2002 to 2003.” But when it came to the running and jogging category, apparel was up by 10 percent! Running and jogging shoe sales were up by 6 percent! It was the fifth consecutive year that sales of running and jogging shoes increased. The average retail price of a pair of running shoes in 2003 was $50.08, a drop from $50.99 in 2002.

2. Indeed, New Balance’s aggressive running-specific marketing has paid off, as its market share rose from 16.7 percent to 18.8 percent. But it is still dwarfed by Nike, whose market share is 33 percent.

3. Demographically speaking, our instincts were correct. There has been little change here since 1998, except in one category. There has been a steady drop in the percentage of young people who run at least 100 days a year, from 34.7 percent in 1998 to a mere 29.2 percent in 2003—not a good trend. The increase in youth obesity and sedentary lifestyles has been highlighted as a national epidemic by all the news magazines, but little is being done about reversing the trend by Americans to eat too much and move too little.

In other demographic news: The number of running households with $75,000 and above annual income rose from about 9.9 million in 1998 to about 12.8 million in 2003. The average age of the American runner has inched up from 28.1 years of age in 1998 to 30.6 in 2003. The total number of U.S. runners (defined as running at least six days a year) has stayed pretty steady between 1998 and 2003: 22.5 million compared with 22.9 million. The percentage of U.S. runners with college degrees has risen to 53.6 percent from 50.2 percent in 1998. In race participation, women now represent 52 percent of the total compared with 48 percent for men; in 1998 it was 39 percent women. This is no doubt due to all the women’s races that are being staged. Again, there is reason to panic as far as young people are concerned, as race participation is a realm of the older folks: 28.8 percent are 25 to 34; 28.1 percent are 35 to 44, and 27.6 percent are 45 and older. The younger categories are appalling: 7.4 percent in the 6–17 age group, not including kid runs, and 8.2 percent in the 18–24 age group.

4. Marathon participation once again increased—by 2 percent in 2003. In shorter distances, there was such a significant decline that for the first time since the USATF began keeping these statistics in 1987, the total number of race participants in the United States went down.

Here are the distances that lost participants:

• 1 mile—minus 3 percent
• 5K—minus 4 percent
• 8K—minus 4 percent
• 10K—minus 2 percent
• 12K—minus 8 percent
• 15K—minus 7 percent

Where were the gains?

• 4 mile—plus 3 percent
• half-marathon—plus 4 percent
• 20K—plus 4.5 percent
• 25K—plus 4.5 percent
• 30K—plus 4.5 percent
• marathon—plus 2 percent

5. There has been a tremendous increase in the number of races being offered over the past few years, and in many instances the new races are either on existing race dates in a specific geographic area or are so close to existing dates that both races are hurt. In 2003, 596 new 5K courses were certified in the United States. That increased the number of 5Ks available in this country to an astonishing 4,962! The 5K accounted for more than half of the total (9,530) of certified road races in the United States.

The USATF has kept track of why potential participants don’t enter road races. In 1994, for all distances the reasons were (1) lack of promotion, (2) weather, and (3) too many events. In 2003, the reasons for fewer road-race finishers in shorter-distance events were (1) training programs not affiliated with event, (2) too many events close to race day, (3) purpose of race is fund-raising and doesn’t cater to runners, (4) lack of uniqueness and/or nothing has changed in recent years, (5) lack of promotions, (6) weather, and (7) race fees and economy.

I find the primary reason for people not entering shorter road races to be especially fascinating and in keeping with what we have been harping on for years. If there isn’t a training program connected with the shorter racing event, the potential participant doesn’t train for and enter the race. This is ridiculous—another bow to laziness. Numerous books are available with tried-and-true training programs, books by some of the giants in the field—Hal Higdon, Joe Henderson, Jeff Galloway, Bob Glover, and others; some of them even offer the programs online that will run a potential racer through workouts that are guaranteed to bring success. Yet runners want to be spoon-fed programs. Very effective training programs and groups are offered by local running clubs and sometimes even by local running stores. Our complaint for years has been that today’s runner has lost the self-reliance of the runner of old and in the process has lost many of the intrinsic rewards that come with running but that must be earned by becoming more thoroughly immersed in the sport. It follows the trend begun years ago when many schools cut homework from the curriculum.

The statistics beg the question: just how healthy is running in the United States? It continues to be the other end of the bell curve from sedentary lifestyles and obesity, but it is stalling. Little by little, the obese end of the curve is . . . well . . . becoming more obese, just as the supersized meal the python ate is closer to its ass than its middle.

What’s the answer? The secret for increasing the interest in running seems to be in the statistics of nonparticipation in the younger age groups. Certainly, with physical education classes in many schools vanishing, kids just aren’t becoming familiar with their own physicality. Cuts in track and field and cross-country programs at schools are also causing a decline in the number of runners. At the same time, it is ironic that cross-country is one of the least expensive of all school sports programs. There is also an increasing emphasis on team sports run by parents that involve car-pooling kids to sports fields instead of letting kids run loose, put together their own games, and just in general be kids. Today’s highly organized kid sports include a lot of standing around and postpractice trips to McDonald’s.

We met in person only once, and then for less than an hour almost 30 years ago. Yet I count Jack Foster as one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had. Like all the great ones, he has never stopped giving.

Measured by the most said in the least words, one of the best books ever written about running was really just booklet length—Foster’s Tale of the Ancient Marathoner. Its first words, and far from its best, aren’t his but mine that introduce him to readers.

“If a friendship can be measured by the number of letters two people exchange,” I wrote in the foreword, “then I can count Jack Foster among my best friends. On my desk here now is an inch-thick folder of lightweight blue aerogrammes postmarked ‘Rotorua, New Zealand.’ I feel I know Foster about as well as I know any runner.”

At the time we hadn’t yet met. We tried at the Munich Olympics before the marathon he ran there at age 40.

I wormed my way into the Olympic Village, found the New Zealand compound, and knocked on the door that I’d learned was his. No one answered.

Oh, well, I thought at the time, I’ll try again later in the Games. But a few days later, everything changed for that Olympics and for all to follow. No intruder sneaked into the Village again.

Our writing back and forth continued, peaking during his writing of that wonderful little booklet (which I edited for publication in 1974). He handwrote it in tiny script across almost 100 pages of aerogrammes.

By then the sport knew him as the world masters marathon record holder. His mark of 2:11:19, set at age 41 while silver-medaling at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, would stand until 1990.

We finally did meet, briefly, at the Boston Marathon in 1976. The meeting was awkward, as we tried to reconcile the person imagined from written words with the one now standing before us, speaking.

Though his measurements (about 5 feet, 8 inches and weighing in the 130s) were known to me, I was surprised by how small he looked. We expect people who have done big things to be bigger than life.

Jack and I didn’t say much that night, at least not to each other. We stood together at a question-and-answer clinic, where he wowed the crowd with his simple wisdom.

He did the same for me as he now gave voice to what he had told me by letter over the years. Though we never talked again, I would never stop repeating his words.

Other runners feel that way, too. Jack’s booklet was a treasure when published 30 years ago and is much