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To Create a New Category, Name the New Game

Brilliant category narratives evangelize a new discipline for winning—while positioning the old one as obsolete.

In the 1990s, I ran the New York City Marathon three times.

Each year, the night before the race, I would attend a carbo-load party at a popular running club. Joining hundreds of other runners, I would stuff my face with pasta in the hopes of not “hitting the wall” — running out of carbs to power my muscles across the finish line.

The final year I ran the race, the club invited a celebrity running coach to be the dinner’s guest speaker. I don’t remember his name, but I’ll never forget his message:

“Not to ruin your meal,” he said, “but the best long-distance runners now know that the absolute worst thing you can do the night before a marathon is to carbo-load.”

My fellow runners and I froze, spaghetti dangling from our mouths. Carbo-loading the night before a long race was orthodoxy. It was what you were supposed to do.

Yet, as the coach presented new data and science about athletic endurance, it became hard to dismiss what initially seemed like a…