I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people.

What on earth is happening at Runners World? At the moment, I’m running races but not training so decided to get my running fix through reading. We used to subscribe to Runners World but cancelled because we decided that there was nothing really new, just a re-hash of articles we’d already read. About three weeks ago a running friend told us there was an excellent article on Race The Train, a race that we’d run in the summer so off I trotted to pick up the November issue. Why do magazines do that? Publish the November issue in the first week in October? It’s not just Runners World, they all do it; I just can’t understand why you would publish a magazine three to four weeks before it is supposed to be due to be released, anyway, back to “What’s happening at Runners World”? If they cram anymore words on the front cover they won’t have space for the photo of the barely dressed model. Have they muddled up their priorities? They’ve cut her down to size and squeezed her in between a plethora of empty slogans.

There are thirteen separate messages on the front cover telling the browser about some not-to-be-missed article inside. From a design, marketing and running perspective this is a shambles. Isn’t there anybody on their editorial team who can take a step back and say “We’ve gone too far, our front cover is bobbins”. The photo is too small to attract the pervs and the messages are too many and too unclear to appeal to runners who want to improve. They’re just SHOUTING at me with their meaningless headlines. The only purpose of this cover is to win a competition for a magazine that can cram thirteen meaningless slogans and a pervy photo onto one cover; I don’t think such a competition exists.

What the f*** does “Think Your Way To A New PB” mean anyway? Why have they misused capital letters in this way? The article barely fills a page, has unforgivable typos and could have been written by a four year old. It does not provide me with the tools to improve performance. There is absolutely no science in this article, not even “bad science”. You could not accuse the authors of being charlatans as they don’t make exaggerated claims, it’s just filler.

“Beginners Run Off Road”, is just the same. Fewer then 500 words on running trail races. There are so many brilliant, inspiring, horrible, frightening trail races that you could easily fill a couple of pages with anecdotes and advice, but this article is just bland and instantly forgettable.

And on it goes. If I was an advertiser, I’d be really disappointed that the journalism and editorial professionalism was so poor. The quality of the advertising copy far exceeds that of the content of this magazine. I don’t have an axe to grind; I would genuinely like to read articles that are inspiring, thought–provoking and inspirational. The closest Runners World gets in this issue are the articles by Paul Groves on re-running his school cross country race and the Race The Train article by Warren Pole.

As ever, the “Rave Run”, where a reader describes their favourite run is hugely disappointing. There’s a brilliant photo and a story that demands at least a thousand words but it’s crammed into a two page spread. The photography on this article is consistently superb and the chosen subject invariably has a story to tell that is worth reading. But the article does not tell that story. Even when they have stumbled onto a winning formula, the editors manage to screw it up.

That said, they’re better than the opposition. Come on; feed me! There’s a readership out there that wants good quality journalism and the current offerings don’t meet that need.