The rising trend of the shaming of fast runners at races.

You're so vain wrote:

Yep, classic grumblebrag[quote]eds wrote:

I'll see your grumblebrag and raise it a dumblebrag.

While I haven't experienced outright hostility, I will say that it is hard to select an event to race. I like to train and challenge myself in races. Racing helps to bring out your best effort. Ten or 20 years ago, you could show up at any event and assume it was a race. But now I check previous results to be sure the run is competitive, so I don't show up to race a fun run. I'm not afraid of good competition. I'm afraid that an event won't be competitive and if I try to race I will be the weirdo racing the fun run.

You guys are all hobby joggers.

If you aren't in the diamond league, you're doing it for fun

Get over yourselves

Joggyhobber....... wrote:

I really HATE when some young fast guy shows up at the local yokel 5k I cherry picked to win in 19 minutes as last years winning time was 20:30 and there were 47 joggers. Of course he tempos a 16 flat and I have a great race running 18:56 to smoke all the other joggers by 2 minutes. I still end up a loser.

The likelihood you win is 1/number-of-runners.

Welcome to hobby jogging.

The humble braggers bemoaning their excellence there is one easy answer. "Hi! How are you? How was your run today? Hit a PR?? You can do it. Keep at it."

This coming from a midpack hobby jogger who has seen plenty of you self important ponces 'concerned' about your pr while destroying hobby joggers.

I'm fine with someone destroying hobby jogger times. Get some social skills.

At the end of the day, just always give your best effort and just ignore everything else. People who appreciate what you are doing will gravitate toward you, and others negative folks, well, who cares. Also

Pop_pop!_v2.1.1 wrote:

This coming from a midpack hobby jogger who has seen plenty of you self important ponces 'concerned' about your pr while destroying hobby joggers.

Just googled "ponces" and I will be using this term a lot more going forward.

"Brought to prominence in the 1960's, initially to describe a pimp". Yes indeed!

wah wah wah. Get over yourself. This is all a delusion of yours - not a "trend".

You seem like a good enough dude, but I have never experienced this, ever. I am a sub 17 5K master and a former competitive miler who made a little noise (very little). There is no shifting trend. no contempt of those fleet of foot. The only thing I have ever experienced at the local 5ks and 1/2 mares and whatever else regular people are "running" is envy and adulation. My point is this: most on these boards have a gift when it comes to running that 99% of the runners @ local events can't even sniff. How often did George Carlin show up to open mic @ the local comedy store? Hardly ever, but when he did . . . damn. So enjoy it and to steal from the other posters, we all need to get over ourselves.

bump

You have failed to show that its a "rising trend".

35 isn't a hobby jogger's time for a 10k. That is faster than 5:43 pace. Faster than 18:00 flat for a 5k. What hobby jogger do you know that can do that?

I think the original post raises a legitimate and interesting issue, and it's a bummer that seemingly every message board on letsrun requires one to sift through so many comments by trolls. The signal to noise ratio has become disappointingly low.

I ran the DC Trot for Hunger yesterday, and the announcer did an excellent job making clear who exactly should be lining up at the front or the back. I think that helped limit any hostility between the serious runners and the hobby joggers. Out of 3,000+ runners, times ranged from 15:18 by a current Stanford runner to more than an hour for the inexperienced folks just coming to support a worthy charity.

I think a very real disdain exists among some of the so-called "fun runners" toward those who train to challenge themselves and race at maximum effort, and for whatever reason it is only socially acceptable for the inferior runners to mock the serious runners. This cultural bias manifests itself in several ways. For example, when a fat person criticizes a fit runner, accusing them of being "too thin." It is very insulting for someone who trains hard and maintains a healthy diet and lifestyle to essentially be criticized as unhealthy by some obese dimwit whose norm for a "healthy" weight consists of being 20 pounds overweight. But such criticism is deemed socially acceptable, whereas a fit person cannot call a fat person fat without being viewed as an offensive jerk.

Anyway, my view is that if a race is timed and has awards, then one shouldn't be viewed in the "geez focker" manner for competing seriously. As races grow in numbers, however, the reality is that those races will cater more toward the fun-runners, who bring an extremely different mindset to such events. It's running's version of the anti-intellectual bias.

Doesntaddup wrote:

35 isn't a hobby jogger's time for a 10k. That is faster than 5:43 pace. Faster than 18:00 flat for a 5k. What hobby jogger do you know that can do that?

What 35min 10k "runner" can get sponsorship, or win enough prize money to quit his day job?

At my local turkey trot about 4,300 people run the 5k. They are ideally organized on the starting line by time so those of us who run faster are able to start out running at our pace. I would say out of the yellow bibs (18 and faster) there were about 1500 people over the age of 60 or over 250 pounds. The discrepancy in this race was terrifying as the winner was breaking 15 as I spent the first mile breaking through what could be considered an established retirement community. I was sworn at by a woman (honestly she may have been a trucker) struggling to move as I passed her off the line. I feel that races need to start having entrants verify their registration time by providing documentation of previous times. Anyone not serious enough to be able to quickly do this will thus be bumped back. The kid that won got less applause than the walkers finishing.

Verify registration times with documentation of previous times? Never been an RD before, have you?

I like the meta humor wrote:

I ran a thanksgiving day Half Marathon

THAT's what we have the international, national, regional federations for: To organize competition for performance-oriented athletes. With Salazar-vertified rules and such.

So you Kipped it if you somehow witnessed the victor's applause .

almost but not quite wrote:

0/10

No true runner would grab a gel in a race barely over an hour.

^This

Chewbacca wrote:

Verify registration times with documentation of previous times? Never been an RD before, have you?

Many track races require this. If track meets with a thousand competitors can do it (examples Stanford or Payton jordan), so why can't a local 5k? Usually those track meets cost less to enter than the local 5k too.

18:00 flat for a 5K won't even land you on the varsity team for the majority of HS cross country programs being run on golf courses or hilly parks in the mud. If you can't break 18:00 pace on the road, you ARE a hobby jogger.