Back in January, editor Tish Hamilton told the Runner’s World art and photo department about the first-person story she’d be writing about those of us who will never become elite athletes — no matter how much we sacrifice, or how hard we train.
(A few months earlier she’d spoken on a panel with a man introduced to the crowd of runners as the Boston Streaker, due to all the Boston Marathons he’d run. Only 10 percent of all marathon finishers are fast enough to even qualify for Boston, which is what makes running Boston such an achievement. This particular runner has always made it in with ease, which has not been the case for Tish, who has also run Boston multiple times. Because she’s always just squeaked in, she introduced herself to the crowd as the Boston Squeaker.)
She told us more about all of her hard work and determination, which yields a performance that amounts to little more than mediocrity when compared to that of an individual who works just as hard, but who has a genetic predisposition to excel in athletics — like the Streaker.
Tish described her feature as “the life of a squeaker” — a phrase that immediately conjured up an image in my mind. I quickly sketched this drawing of a little mouse poking her head out of a giant running shoe, and hastily wrote above her the phrase that Tish had used, leaving out the “u” in squeaker in my rush:
Two months later, we published the feature in the May issue of Runner’s World. Here’s the opener, photographed by Grant Cornett:
I sketched out a couple more scenarios, once I read the story. One had the Tish squeaker in her little mouse hole home, watching Dexter on an iPhone. Another had her and some friends at the starting line in Boston, dwarfed by the genetically gifted athletes:
Here’s how the final versions turned out:
Here’s another spread, with the squeakers racing:
I was surprised and happy to hear that a common question from people who saw my layout for the first time was, “How did they get the mice to wear clothes?” …
Here’s a sketch I did as an editor talked to the art and photo department about a feature on overcoming mental roadblocks. I envisioned a little shoulder-scale angel and devil in exercise clothes, whispering into the ears of a runner facing obstacles:
Here’s what photographer Dan Saelinger did with my sketches:
Here’s another sketch I did for the May issue, for a feature about a senior citizen running club that calls themselves the Over the Hill Gang. I knew right away that I wanted to do a diptych built around black socks and a t-shirt with the name of the running club on it.
For the final layout, I decided to swap the order of the photos, shot in Hawaii by Sian Kennedy:
The covers (two newsstand versions and two subscriber versions, each with a unique gate-fold counterpart) star elite runners Shalane Flanagan and Kara Goucher:
The two were photographed in Portland by Guido Vitti.
