Possessed Magazine Running Blog

THE WEIRD ISSUE

FEBRUARY 2024

Running is weird. Really weird. But then everything is weird if you put your mind to it. Dancing is weird, sex is weird, those birds that collect blue objects are off their tits... But of all the weird things in the weird world, running is up there with the weirdest of them. In fact, there was a time when recreational running was considered so weird, so peculiar, so goddamn madcap, runners would routinely attract the attention of the law. In 1968, thirty-two runners in the U.S. were questioned by police, including a senator in South Carolina (which, as you can imagine, caused quite a stir), a God-fearing housewife in Indiana, and a Connecticut man who even received a ticket for ‘illegal use of a highway by a pedestrian.’ He had his day in court and managed to overturn the charge, but the judge cautioned him to stop running, or he would end up in jail the next time. The man ignored the warning and wound up going to the big house for eight years, where the other inmates tossed him around like a sock.
These days, everyone’s running, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less weird, and for this issue of POSSESSED, we decided to take a look at the weird world of running (and see how many times we could say the word ‘weird’) with a collection of weird features and bizarre departments, including an interview with extreme ultra-marathon designer Mark Cockbain, a conversation with multi-instrumentalist Delicate Steve, a deep-dive into the weirdest moments in running history, a look Satisfy pro athlete Max Jolliffe’s photo album, new running playlists from Choir Boy, Cobra Man’s Sarah Rayne, and Satisfy pro Jakob Åberg, and—super weird—we invent pickle juice popsicles and call the Swifticle Picksicles.

All that and some other weird stuff in POSSESSED #50: The Running is Weird Issue.