Miscellaneous
This week, the newest member of the CITIUS Mag podcast family comes on Run Your Mouth to talk about his ideas for changing the sponsorship and marketing models of track and field, his college highs and lows, playing in a band, and everything in between. Noah Droddy is a professional marathoner, Indiana native, and style icon who hosts the podcast D3 Glory Days with college teammate Stu Newstat. Most recently, he finished second at the 2020 marathon project in a personal best of 2:09:09. This episode is full of hot takes and good stories and you won’t want to miss a minute. On going into the Marathon Project with an expiring shoe contract: “I went into the race with that attitude that I was fighting for my life in the sport, which, as much as I hate that stress, has worked out well for me before in the past when I have these clear stakes and I can rise to the occasion.” On building the sport by changing the sponsorship model: “You really have to burn down the sponsorship model […]There are so many things we’ve done to make the sport niche and benefit only a few people, like logo restrictions for example, but if you make changes to get more eyeballs on the sport, we could be NASCAR [….] Right now, we are all kind of dependent on the shoe industry; the only ‘path’ to making a living is to sign a shoe deal. I think we’ll really know the sport is in a good place is when people are signing sponsorships with companies not endemic to running.” On how running D3 shaped his running future: “I was not a good enough high school athlete where I could’ve joined a competitive Division 1 program and so D3 was really my on-ramp in continuing to run [….] my junior year, I qualified for nationals for the second time and ended up finishing 9th. That was one of those moments where I was like, ‘maybe I’m better than I thought I was,’ and it allowed me to dream bigger […] to redefine my own potential.”