Published by Bauer Media, the title primarily targets the rapidly growing number of MAMILs* (Middle-Aged Men in Lycra), who are looking to get and stay fit by taking on new challenges and adventures outdoors.
The first cover star is double Olympic champion rower turned adventurer James Cracknell, who has raced to the South Pole, rowed across the Atlantic, and run sub-three hour marathons.
There are now an estimated six million people (and growing!) in the UK who ride road bikes, mountain bikes, run, kayak or open water swim to take on outdoor adventures while keeping fit. As a result, entries to trail races, triathlons, cyclo-sportives and adventure races are now at a record high in the UK.
Jonathan Manning, Editor of Outdoor Fitness comments: “Ours is an audience of successful, competitive readers who are entering middle-age with a refusal to grow old. They’re ABC1s with well-above-average incomes who value their individual fitness and health extremely highly. And they have an insatiable desire for new experiences that provide a genuine physical and mental challenge. They’re not training for vanity in the hope that the blonde at the bar notices their biceps, but for the intensely personal reasons of preparing for their next adventure and challenging themselves. They don’t have anything against the gym, but given the choice of a fresh air and the great outdoors, or MTV and the treadmill, they would always choose to be out in the real world.”
Outdoor Fitness claims to have assembled a first-class team of specialist sport coaches to devise training plans to help readers get fitter, faster and stronger and to improve discipline-specific techniques. It will showcase the most amazing outdoor challenges here in Britain as well as from around the world, from mountain running in the Lake District and preparing for your first triathlon, to the epic Marathon des Sables in the Sahara Desert.
The first issue carries advertising from well-known brands who reflect and embrace the wide variety of sports covered by Outdoor Fitness; these include Mercedes Benz, Breitling, Wiggle, Merrell and Salomon.
Rob Croxall, MD Leisure and Transport, Bauer Media, concludes: “As publishers of Trail and Trail Running it’s exciting to be first to market with a new brand which is ahead of the trend and will cater for a rapidly growing audience of people who are passionate about getting fit, outdoors. We think Outdoor Fitness will become the number one magazine for sporting adventure junkies.”
