40 hour work week. Advantage desk jockey or construction worker for running?

working man wrote:

From what I've seen, many top local runners are often heavy labor guys.

What's the takeaway? Being active all day is more helpful than the exhaustion it might impart?

I'd say the desk job guy but it depends on the job and how stressful it is. Many full-time desk jobs these days are actually exempt 50-60hr/wk jobs. Also, it depends on how flexible the boss and management are. Some environments let you go for runs any time of the day whereas others follow strict schedules.

Construction seems rough especially if you have to be outdoors and on your feet all day and in environments where it could be extremely cold or hot out (you didn't specify what area of the country the construction job would be in). Also construction is bad long-term because you are probably breathing in some harmful chemicals from time to time and thus the incidence of certain cancers in construction workers is higher.

An outdoor job like tour guide or park ranger would be ideal for runs. Easy and slightly physically active. The downside though is that these jobs are hard to come by, often pay very little, and usually require weekend work. I've worked at a state park for a while. Its ideal for training, as soon as I get off work, I'm right there at the trails. Or I can run and shower in the park before work. The only bad thing is that 99% of races are on the weekend and trying to get more than an occasional weekend off is like pulling teeth from a wake grizzly bear.

working man wrote:

From what I've seen, many top local runners are often heavy labor guys.

What's the takeaway? Being active all day is more helpful than the exhaustion it might impart?

This may be true the younger the runner is, but my experience is that most of the top local runners over 30yo hold white-collar jobs, and not only that, but jobs that afford them high incomes. Most are doctors, lawyers, engineers and the like. They seem to be successful not only at running, but in life. It's as though they have this incredible drive - and, not to mention, time-management skills - that translate to all aspects of their lives, from running to careers to family.

I suspect that those heavy-labor guys that you reference that are good runners flame out as soon as they get families. Although, personally, I've never met any good runners from blue-collar careers. And this is why:

I have unique perspective in this because I have my feet in both sides. I'm a college-educated business owner, but I own a business in a blue-collar field. I can assure you that my experience has been that a vast majority of blue-collar workers do very little running. Most have little initiative, other than to get their weekly paycheck and their daily six-pack of beer and to do well in their fantasy football league. Plus, there is a certain "barrio/ghetto" mentality that they harbor. For one, they resent people who exercise - that is, that those people are the well-to-do who can afford gym memberships and the like. Second, the prevailing attitude among blue-collar workers is to get by with as little effort as possible, which of course, is not necessarily the most conducive attitude to become a formidable runner. Third, if there is any sense of athletic drive among them, it may come from the younger ones who haven't yet put on their spare tire, and if they are to exercise, it is to go to the park to play "futbol" or to the court to play basketball... but never exclusively to go run.

Trust me, I get a lot of stares when I leave our industrial park to go out for my daily lunch-time run.

Being on your feet for much of the day is good for running performance in my experience. On the other hand, your average desk jockey is likely going to have more energy and motivation to get out and run after work.

working man wrote:

From what I've seen, many top local runners are often heavy labor guys.

What's the takeaway? Being active all day is more helpful than the exhaustion it might impart?

Being physically active all day makes you super fit. You can run to work, work hard all day, and run home. Office work can't give you that extra edge, not even in recovery.

I am a geologist and my job requires that I spend some weeks on site and some weeks in the office. I find that spending 12 hours on a construction site in steel toe/steel shank boots in all kinds of weather (New England) is exhausting, and most of the time my duty is light - I'm just there consulting or for oversight. The quality of ny runs are much greater during office periods.

Some speculation:

From a performance and lifestyle point of view, neither. I'd say try to get a service job that involves standing on your feet. Why? The best of both worlds.

The new science is out that says that too much sitting is bad for health and even bad for making gains from periods of exercise. Desk jobs will be excessive in those regards. Plus, today's digital age already requires us to spend times at our computers and our own personal desks for our own personal purposes (internet, social, personal work, spanking the monkey, etc.). The volume of sitting is just too much of a problem in contemporary society so if you're out to be the best, minimize that.

While I frequently encounter grassroots heroes, real and imagined, from many walks of life, in the present and past, who do/did construction work part-time to their real vocations/callings, I think objectively considered it's not good for the reason the quoted poster has said as well as the risk of exhausting yourself (as far as saving your best for focusing on running is concerned) physically and emotionally.

Throw in the 80/20 general paradigm of training. High volumes of low intensity pace work, with some cream of throttling work. Therefore, your side job shouldn't be so tough as to interfere with that volume (as long hours on construction might) or intensity (as the more physically stressful extreme aspects of the job might), nor should it be so sedentary as to ... also interfere.

Khadevis Robinson and Brian Sell both worked jobs apart from their running pursuit, in service that involved standing and modest socializing. Seems like they struck a good balance. You could probably come up with many more examples, some even far more successful, but I think the idea I'm proposing is interesting and has objective merits, whether or not it has correlated with great running achievements.