'People used to get the magazine solely so they could get their results and keep a physical copy of the results,' said Amy Clark, editor of UltraRunning. A major draw of the magazine was that it published the full results of ultramarathons, listing every single finisher. Then, in 1981, UltraRunning magazine came along. (Certainly if we trace the sport's history back to 19th-century pedestrianism, it was through the newspapers of the day that race reports were circulated.) Some of the earliest 'official' modern race reports were typewritten or dot-matrix printed and circulated among enthusiasts in the 1970s. Here's a look at the three main leaps in its format, in the past 50 years. Postal Service to smartphones and Strava. When it comes to the modern sport of ultrarunning, race reports have been created and circulated using the changing technology of the day, from printers and the U.S. Do FKTs count? What about the Tarahumara running traditions of Rarajipare and Ariwete? Or Kipchoge's sub-two-hour marathon? In the end, people have always run and told stories about it.

Running is even older than humanity, and not all runs are races. After all, the race report is a form of storytelling, and storytelling is as old as humanity. This introduces a number of challenges in chronicling the history of race reports. Today, we associate race reports with the internet, but that wasn't always the case. The race report has officially hit the media multiverse. During ultras today, runners often capture and post footage on smartphones, while GPS watches chirp like birds. With digital media, a variety of race report formats emerged, from vlogging to TikTok to Strava recaps. Since then, the landscape has changed tremendously.

In 2010, when I started running, blogs were de rigueur for race reports.

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