KAIRONIC Magazine by Auteur Sportif

We're dumping social media and jumping into print. Here's the what, why and how.

As the saying goes, if you had 6 hours to chop down a tree, spend the first 4 sharpening the axe. Well I spent a long time crafting this idea but then put it all together in 3 days - with a little help from my friends.

Here’s the idea:

Running quiets the chaos and allows us to focus. It affords us the luxury of space and time to be at ease and think clearly. It is a god-given sanctuary from a noisy digital world that is slowly wearing all of us out. The time we spend running has an outsized value that chronological data from a watch could never convey. The idea for KAIRONIC is derived from the chronos and kairos temporal models developed by the Greeks where one is a more literal, quantitative scale of time and the other more qualitative, based on moments of significance and meaning.

Outside of running we also pursue these kaironic moments as we interact with the wider world - objects, quotes, art, ideas, people and places that are just more, well . . . interesting. There is more value in the time spent with these interesting things than an equal amount of time spent, say, scrolling social media or doing the laundry. This is where the idea for KAIRONIC goes beyond just running into a mindset or lifestyle. We’ll hit on music, style, gear, stories, films, travel, cultural commentary and more but do it all through the lens of a runner. There will be some long reads but many more snack-sized ideas to get you thinking and add value. For example - many of us may like the new Tame Impala album but do you know why he may be interesting to runners specifically? You’ll have to flip the pages to find out.

Here’s how it came together:

I’ve created tabloid-style print publications as photography promos in the past and they were always really great. I couldn’t think of a better way to simultaneously pull the brand away from social media (more on that) yet convey everything Auteur Sportif stands for. In order to get it launched I spent three straight days absolutely ripping in InDesign and recruited some friends to help write and curate. I’m thrilled with how it turned out.

A huge thank you to Luke Jay, Raziq Rauf, Josh Lynott, Abel Recknold and Cole Townsend for the last minute help to turn this around. They all stepped up big time.

This first issue contains a load of quotes, images and thoughts I have been collecting as notes and screenshots plus two articles from Raz, a note from Josh, style commentary from Cole, running commentary from Abel and several images from Luke. We also interview both Allison Lynch and Sam Delgado, and I revisit a popular post from the early days of A Matter of Brand .

Issue 001 may only be purchased as a single-issue for now but I hope to have a subscription setup for the next one. The plan is to drop quarterly issues that can live around your house, office, running store or coffee shop. When you’re done I encourage you to pass it on to a friend.

Use the button above to subscribe and access the website, then you’ll be directed to the KAIRONIC page. The magazine is $12 plus shipping and we do ship internationally. Our current subscribers already got this low down on Friday and we have a bunch of orders waiting from them. Issue 001 starts shipping Monday December 1. If you’re going to TRE I will be there with a limited number of issues on hand.

Here is why:

We’re done with social media. As of today (Monday 11/17) we’ve deactivated the Auteur Sportif social media accounts. They’re gone. The nature of social media works too much against the things that embody both running and Auteur Sportif. I guess it’s sort of punk and gutsy but I think it’s more just being considerate around how we spend our time. Social has become a huge time suck with a disproportionate payoff but existing brands are completely beholden to it - they’d take a huge revenue hit if they dropped it as a channel. Also noteworthy is that almost all of you reading this hate it. You’d LOVE it if you could be done with it. I don’t know of (any?) other brands in running that live completely outside of social so maybe there’s a cool word-of-mouth factor there but the intent is to just be real and play our own game by our own rules. Stay tuned for more.

As always, thank you for your support and helping to spread the word. I think you’re going to like what we’ve put together.

✌️ Matt