The 2024 Footnotes Favorites
Not just a year-end roundup: a year-end roundup with trophies.
Hey there, Pedestrians. I hope you’re having a lovely end to the year.
Before we bring 2024 to a close, let’s celebrate some of the most thoughtful work written about life on foot by hosting a little awards show.
Shall we call it Footnotes Favorites? Perhaps, The Footies for shorthand?
Okay, we’ll workshop the name, and I can’t give away real trophies. (Yet.) But I can point you toward some damn good writing from this year about or around human-powered movement. Let’s jump in.
Articles & Essays
Best Investigative Reporting
“How to Catch a London Bike Thief” by
A deep dive, first-hand account of surging bike thefts in London, wherein the editor of
unexpectedly became the subject of his own reporting:“In recent weeks I’d been working on an investigation into London’s bike theft epidemic, hoping to understand the mentality and methods of the thieves operating all over the capital. Then, on Friday afternoon, my own bicycle was stolen from outside my house.”
Waterson chases after his stolen bike, confronting not only thieves, but an underfunded police force and market dynamics making bike theft especially lucrative.
Best race report
“This Carbon We Borrow” by Laura Kantor (Ultra Running Magazine)
Kantor, writing ten years after her first ultramarathon, describes finishing the Keys 50-Miler with the perspective of cancer treatment, lost family, and a decade of life lived:
“This carbon I have borrowed has taken me to incredible depths. This carbon took me on to run eight more ultramarathons, a dozen marathons and thousands of miles of road and trail, in solitude and in packs, but never alone ... I will never curse this borrowed carbon. I have put a million miles on this tactical vehicle I call my body. I know it is not mine to keep, only to care for.”
What if every race report were written a decade after its finish? Might we gain a stronger sense of the role a footrace played in the beautiful tangle of our lives?
Best Professional Sports Story
“At the Olympic Trials Marathon, DFL Means Pain Over Regret” by Dennis Young (Defector)
Sometimes you come across a story and think, ‘Well dang, I wish I’d thought of that.’ For me, that’s Young’s February piece about the small group of women and men who have competed in the US Olympic Marathon Trials and finished DFL: ‘Dead Fucking Last’:
“It’s a unique race, with a very small field by marathon standards. In the back, it’s lacking in weekend warriors or otherwise casual runners who the qualifiers are used to thumping locally. Up front, even some of the best pros are in over their heads trying to make the Olympic team. Just behind them, plenty of runners are going for broke chasing equally unrealistic results.
“The result is a quadrennial massacre.”
Best Environmental-Endurance Story
“I’ll Run Until There’s No Sea Left” by Amanda Ulrich (The Guardian)
It’s a zany quest that Ulrich describes: an ultramarathoner’s attempt to circle the Salton Sea wearing a gas mask to draw attention to an ongoing environmental catastrophe. California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, is steadily receding, exposing a toxic lakebed from decades of agricultural runoff.
The article follows William Sinclair, who plans to run around the sea’s perimeter annually to capture specific GPS coordinates, measuring its size year over year. As Sinclair circumnavigates the lake, Ulrich captures a sense of place and ruin:
On the exposed lakebed (often called “the playa”) where Irondad started and finished his run, dozens of large-scale art installations made from found materials dot the landscape. One wooden sign, topped by a metal pelican, reads: “Bring us back!” Not far away, a giant fish made from rusted sheet metal and driftwood crests a wave of sand, its mouth agape. At the sea’s edge, big punched-out letters simply say “SOS”.
Best Athlete Reflection
“Do not go gentle into that good night” by
Petkovic’s essay on her retirement from professional tennis reflects deep rumination after a life dedicated to a single activity that has now come to an end. When your identity is defined by sport, to retire is to die:
“Old age comes early in a tennis player’s life. While others have just begun their professional aspirations, full of hope and optimism for what the future will bring just before people start framing them as middle-aged, tennis players have already been called “veterans” by TV announcers for a few years. Clearly, I’m not over it. I can forgive but I won’t forget. I was 28!”
Such is the tension of an athlete’s life: you gain perspective right as your abilities begin to wither. Written with verve, but without arrogance, Petkovic captures the necessary delusion of great athletes and their grief from moving on.
Publications
Best New Newsletter
by
Former director of marketing and communications for Tracksmith, Lee Glandorf positions The Sweat Lookbook at the intersection of style and sport. And the convergence is oh, so fun.
Fashion writing is enjoyable because even if you’re a scruffy-looking plebe like me, scratching at decade-old polyester on your morning shuffle, it’s still interesting to discover the cultural and social trends woven into the fabric of clothing. Glandorf brings not only a sharp pen, honed writing copy across print and digital mediums, but also an expert eye for lines of fabric and brand presence.
Best Culture Newsletter
by
Featuring profiles on unheralded notables around the world, Raz focuses on locals driving sport at the city- and neighborhood-level instead of nationally renowned athletes.
With polished and pointed reflections on society, commerce, and consumption, Raz has sharpened Running Sucks into the front edge of writing about communities that typically receive little acclaim. Much of the changing nature of run clubs and microbranding would have been lost to me, were it not for Raz. His finger is on the pulse.
Fav post: “Would you spend a paycheck on a pair of running shoes?”
“If a shoe is $150 in the USA, the additional import taxes into Bangladesh put the price up to $200 (24,000 BDT), so not only is it an enormously larger proportion of a Bangladeshi salary (6% of the average annual salary, rather than 0.4%), but it’s more money as well.”
Best Professional Coverage
by Alison Wade
Such is the sheer volume of Fast Women’s running news coverage, at a certain point one begins to wonder if “Alison Wade” is actually the pen name for a team of ten sports reporters. Does Wade sleep? Does she imbibe distance running all day long and during her unconscious dreaming as well? Because Fast Women is an impressive project, sifting through a broad spectrum competitive running happenings, week after week after week.
Moreover, in an age of rampant punditry, Fast Women hearkens back to old-school beat reporting. By the end of any issue, you’re thoroughly grounded in the current news of women’s competitive running. So if you’re reading this and you work for the sort of company that values money-spending eyeballs like mine, Wade’s letter should be part of your advert/sponsorship consideration.
Best Brand/Business Review
by
An essential read for anyone curious about the commercial side of trail running. Trailmix dives into the corporate mechanisms shaping the sport in Europe and the United States, shedding light on everything from sponsorship trends to race organizations. Walsh’s coverage of the ever-fascinating machinations of UTMB® is especially compelling, offering an objective look at how a few companies are shaping trail-running sport and culture.
If you’re curious about how market forces are driving the sport's evolution, Trailmix delivers sharp analysis with engaging storytelling.
Best Social Commentary
by
Arnade’s writing is not for the faint of heart, but then again neither is living in America. Exploring the world on foot, Arnade chronicles a world out of sight of the managerial class. Or rather, it’s a world we refuse to see, ensconced as we are in our cars or fancy running kits, skipping past sidewalks of human misery. This is the careful cultivation of Orwellian doublethink—to recognize humans in distress and then decide, almost unconsciously, that the kindest act is to do nothing, to deny that recognition of humanity even as we make it.
Arnade refuses such denial. He extends both recognition and dignity to those he encounters on foot.
It’s not all post-Trump commentary. As the publication title suggests, Arnade is walking cities around the globe, not just America—an extension of his book, Dignity, itself the result of a decade spent walking around America, now expanded globally. Arnade is too observant to let the eroded political economy of the United States color too much of his wanderings. But he continues to reveal the dynamics of society and place with equal measures of empathy and acerbity.
Fav post: “A Stalled American Dream”
“Wolfing down four donuts and a Kit Kat frappuccino from the Dunkin in the concrete plaza denuded of trees, or two heat-lamp egg and cheese biscuits from the Sheetz at the intersection of two eight lane roads, in your car on the way to work, is no way to live: Life boiled down to the most utilitarian goal of maximizing stuff and minimizing cost, with any of the shared communal-ism the rest of the world understands as essential to what a fulfilling life means long ago washed away by our dismal culture of stripping everything of the sublime.”
Congrats to all our 2024 Footnotes Favorites.
That’s it for this week. What was your favorite writing of 2024? Share in the comments.
Ah thank you for including me in such great company!
Thanks for this list (after dipping into Chris Arnade, I’ll never look at McDonald’s the same way again).