Flat Hills Road

There were two big pieces of news in the running world today, although most of my Facebook feed is talking about just one of them. It’s big news that both Meb Keflezighi and Ryan Hall are running the Boston Marathon, and it should be. Just Meb or just Ryan would be OK news, but both Meb and Ryan means a better shot than ever that we’ll have an American winner. (Look at it this way: just Deena couldn’t do it, and just Kara couldn’t do it, but what if we had Deena and Kara one year?)

The other news, that may not be so widely discussed, was that Ardath “Ardie” Rodale died at her family home this morning at the age of 82.

If that name looks familiar to you, it’s probably because of the last name. Ardie’s late husband, Bob, was the son of J.I. Rodale, organic farming crusader and founder of what was then Rodale Press. Bob took over for his father and built a minor magazine empire, among other things buying and merging The Runner and Runner’s World and bringing the combined magazine to Rodale’s headquarters in Emmaus, a sleepy town just south of Allentown in eastern Pennsylvania.

Bob died in a traffic accident in Moscow while promoting organic farming in newly-opening Russia in the early ’90s, and with that Rodale became one of the biggest woman-run companies in the country. Ardie was the chair from Bob’s death until 2007 and CEO until 2002. (Her daughter Maria is now the CEO.) It might be coincidental that Rodale was frequently on the “best companies to work for” lists in that time, but I’m thinking not.

I worked for Rodale, and therefore for Ardie, from 1996 through 2001. (She handed me my five-year pin.) In all that time I never felt like I was a cog in a machine; in fact, I knew from talking to people at other magazine companies that the Rodale work experience was unlike that at any other publishing company. We didn’t work for an intimidating bully, but for the sort of grandmother who set high expectations and wanted you to reach them. I was extraordinarily fortunate to have had the privilege.

Ardie didn’t take as close an interest in Runner’s World as Bob had, and it’s unlikely that her passing will have a direct effect on it or the sister magazine Rodale bought several years ago, Running Times. (It’s worth noting that I have two articles in the December issue of Running Times.) But Ardie had a role in the running world for a long time, and her passing bears notice.

I’m a bit of a pack rat when it comes to some things; I have convinced myself not to preserve, for example, printed results from most meets, but I do try to save my recordings from the mixed zone. My recorder does not come with Macintosh-compatible software, so I patiently play the recordings through 1/8″ audio cable into the microphone jack, re-recording them in Audacity and saving the files as MP3.

Some events produce dozens of short files, and the task is made more tedious by my distaste for listening to my own recorded voice. (“Who is that idiot asking the questions?”) Once I let go of the actual voices, however, I can listen to the rhythm of the meet and learn from the things which aren’t said.

For example, I’m clearing the 2008 Reebok Grand Prix now. I heard myself talking to Reese Hoffa while the crowd roared in the background; I could tell I was trying to show Hoffa that I was really interested in what he had to say, not what was happening on the track.

It’s also interesting to hear the tone of the interviews changing as the meet progresses. Early in a meet, the interviews are long and rambling, because nobody knows yet what the story of the meet will be, and the reporters want to cover all the bases just in case they wind up having to lead with the athlete standing in front of them. Later in the meet, we find one or two long press-conference type recordings which are The Story (can you say Usain Bolt?) and everything around them is brief and perfunctory. This becomes unfortunate when, for example, I dig back in the archives to find out what Linet Masai said after she beat Tirunesh Dibaba in 2009.

I hope this stuff turns out to be useful for someone someday, but right now its lessons for me are mostly secondary.