Friday 7 December 2012

Newspaper and Magazine promotion

I'm going to be in the paper!

Earlier in the week I phoned the Kent Messenger to try and promote my little marathon adventure and see if they'd be interested in a local chap running a long way in a hot, sandy place for charity (hint hint).

It turns out they were, so yesterday afternoon an almost unbelievably stereotypical photographer came round to take a very staged photo of me in my running gear.

He was nice enough and, while I expressed my reservations about taking a photo on the local promenade as opposed to a local trail run, he said: "they're not really interested in your style or the background - they just want a photo of your head and shoulders"...

Oh. Of course. Silly me. At least I remembered to shave!

Anyway, I'd brought down my camera to ask if he'd take one with mine for me, but no. Apparently the newspaper would rather make me pay £8 for a digital copy of the photo of myself (reminds me of the outrageous prices the official Tough Mudder photographers wanted: £30) so no handy photo for the blog then.

While Kent Messenger will have, no doubt,  an excellent and beautifully touched up photo of me looking incredibly natural in a perfect barefoot-style running position, Trail Running magazine who also want to add some bits about the marathon and my journey, will have to make do with this home timed attempt I took down a little trail that I like to run:

Me on a little trail run near Gravesend.

The editor of Trail Running magazine originally wanted a photo of my running barefoot, but I explained that barefoot-style and barefoot are quite different things, so she'll have to make do with one in my Vivo's.

It's not actually so hard to get press coverage as it turns out. You'd think that getting hold of an editor of a popular magazine would be hard (though to be fair I haven't yet tried Runner's World) but they all put their editor's contact details on their websites and a quick phone call usually get's the name of the person to speak to or at least their email address. In my experience though it's always better to actually speak to someone before sending them a load of info via email as it's harder for them to ignore, plus you get to personally "sell" your story and make a connection with the editor.

As it turns out, she said that she thought her old school teacher was also running the Sahara Marathon so I should look her up when we head over. It's a small world!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing my mug in print and hopefully accompanied with links to both this blog and my JustGiving page so that readers can show their support.

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