I'm waiting for Michael Lewis to write a book on the market dynamics of the sport of running. It fascinates me to see the sport mature, as it gains visibility, (1) encouraging athletes who otherwise would toil in the trenches in more visible sports or not compete at all to make the switch and become runners, and (2) it gains breadth, encouraging those who are modestly competitive at (e.g.) the marathon to move to (e.g.) the wild frontier of ultrarunning, where they can win races. (The same happens in running-to-triathlon: if you were a modestly competitive collegiate runner, you will be very competitive in nearly any big-city triathlon.) It's athletic arbitrage, kind of like when Herschel Walker took up bobsledding or roller-blader Shani Davis took up speed-skating, both going from superb athletes to Olympians. I also understand that it is (1) cyclical, although I'm too young fully to appreciate the last running boom of the 1970s and early 1980s,* and (2) correlated strongly to economic downturns, strengthening the premise that the boom is a question of arbitraging the opportunities the sport presents (if I can't work, may as well get in shape!).
On the other hand, why Michael Lewis? Maybe I'll post this as an SSRN abstract and reserve the topic for the first runningprofs monograph.
*I'm not really too young. Maybe in another post I'll describe the years running with Dad, starting at age 6 and extending until the old man became uncool.
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