Educated people realize that it’s good to have hobbies that benefit your health. Running, swimming, biking, and some lifting. Educated people are more likely to be in the top 10% of earners.
Yes, the higher income group is more likely to travel across the country for a marathon. I’m traveling about 1200 miles away for my next race, and it’s no big destination, but it’s to BQ. I’ve BQ’d many, many times, but I took many years off racing.
I’ll likely do some more obscure destination races after one more Boston.
If you travel 1200 miles for a race, especially since 2020, you should be ashamed. You're a part of the problem. Reality check needed.
I come from a working class family and my parents have had to earn every last penny.
I believe you, but you make it sound as if rich people don’t earn their money too.
If you’re a child born into an upper middle class family or a rich family, the path to you also becoming a successful adult is clearer than the path of person born into a financially disadvantaged situation.
“Earned every last penny” is colloquially used to indicate none of the money he’s made has ever come easy, which would not be true for a person born comfortable.
While many good runners come from middle class and upper middle class, no elite runners come from the wealthy.
They are not tough enough and do not have the physical discipline to be great runners
I don’t know if you can state categorically that they aren’t tough enough or are undisciplined. It could be that when you’re born with a blueprint on how to make millions & billions, you focus on making money as your chief domain and simply use exercise as a hobby.
Educated people realize that it’s good to have hobbies that benefit your health. Running, swimming, biking, and some lifting. Educated people are more likely to be in the top 10% of earners.
Yes, the higher income group is more likely to travel across the country for a marathon. I’m traveling about 1200 miles away for my next race, and it’s no big destination, but it’s to BQ. I’ve BQ’d many, many times, but I took many years off racing.
I’ll likely do some more obscure destination races after one more Boston.
If you travel 1200 miles for a race, especially since 2020, you should be ashamed. You're a part of the problem. Reality check needed.
There are no marathons where I live until December. Plus, I’ll make a vacation out of it and spend time with my parents.
What part of traveling is part of the problem? The CO2 emissions or the virus?
Do you plan to stay home for the next several years?
there's a difference between born comfortable and born rich. for example, Elon Musk's family owned an emerald mine, but his actions in founding his own companies let him become the world's richest man.
on a more normal note, it's not uncommon to see people from families earning ~250-300 a year making ~500 or more a year early in their careers, especially if they go into tech/quant finance/IB
While many good runners come from middle class and upper middle class, no elite runners come from the wealthy.
They are not tough enough and do not have the physical discipline to be great runners
I don’t know if you can state categorically that they aren’t tough enough or are undisciplined. It could be that when you’re born with a blueprint on how to make millions & billions, you focus on making money as your chief domain and simply use exercise as a hobby.
True elite runners are driven to be great at what they do, not to chase money.
If you work a lower paying job, chances are at the end of the day you’re too tired physically to go run. When you’re on your feet all day you just want to rest.
In a way, I slightly envy the newcomers like the OP described. They have no fear in signing up for a 5k and using that as their run. They're still in the infancy of their running where they can notice immediate results and feel enthusiastic about doing better.
I share their other traits of having the money and job security except my 5000 PR from a past life is ~14 :15. This changes things drastically. I cant go out there, run 19 minutes and be enthusiastic about possibly running 18:30 next time out. I feel I need a solid 9 to 15 months to run anything in the 17s and then I *might* feel good with a 16:59. It's not impossible for me to get there but for over 40 it is a lot.
I’ve been with a great running club for over twenty years. Really nice people from all stratas of income. The anesthesiologist best buds with the hourly wager. Best thing is nobody cares what your job is or what you make. People care about running and racing and how fast you are. Its such a refreshing escape from the some of the materialistic people everywhere.
It's not untrue that having more time & money for these things gives one... more time & money. We should take this as a given and then ask: with time & money, why would one be attracted to certain activities over others. The real phenomena we are discussing is: "professional class" people feel the need differentiate themselves from others in the professional class.
Triathlon's select way more for the wealthy than running does. Ditto for climbing, and these things seem way more "interesting" to outsiders than many other activities like going to the gym, or playing pickup basketball. The neat thing about this is that it makes most of these types seem more homogeneous than they would otherwise be.
This is best seen on a college campus where, among the high achievers, those that come from wealthier backgrounds (and specifically upper-middle-class) are more frequently attracted to superficially exotic hobbies that are still within the realm of normality. This is mostly American/Western European trait that is culturally transmitted: -- children of immigrants pick this up, put their parents do not!
Oddly, it has always been this way: Bourgeois Bohemians teemed in turn-of-the-century Paris, using art (and some physical activities) to differentiate themselves. Wyndham Lewis' Tarr shows this very well. Hipster-dom is a 'fetishization of the authentic' and many of these hobbies bear the image of the hyperauthentic, and thus fill the need that many of these types want.
You may now ask, "How can I, an upper middle class striver , differentiate myself". My answer would be the same advice every young person gets (this condition is just a stage of youth anyway): "Just be yourself". If yourself is pithy and cannot define itself without a facade of sweet nothings, -- so be it! you'll just never be different.
Some people run, (and even race) then go to work, stand on their feet for 8-15 hours, then run home. Some people are not trying to hear about your missed flight to Cali for your 3rd vacay.
First, the 'runners' who populate LRC are the worst, entitled white right-wingers you'll see this side of 8chan. Gaining a sense of the zeitgeist here distort your perception of, well, many things. I hope that runners out there aren't as awful as many LRCers, but I have to wonder.
Second, when running swept the country in the 70s and into the 80s it was very much an everyman sport. There were MANY large 10k races around the country that drew thousands of runners and were dirt cheap to enter. It was raw, cheap, competitive and fantastic. Outside of T&F, running was the eccentric sport of non-country-clubber weirdos. It was awesome and much of the appeal was health and the fact that you just needed a pair of sorta running shoes.
Then, like everything that capitalists get their dirty hands on, running gear and specialized training and coaching became a thing. Then, shoes started becoming more technical and much more expensive. Then, the icing on the cake, races themselves became insanely expensive in the last number of years.
Now we live in a world of $150+ normal-price running shoes, $80-100 10Ks and $120 half marathons, marathons often $150-200+. Outside of a small boost during the pandemic recovery, incomes have remained stagnant since the 1970s for normal working people. So, running starts to look like so many other things, a hobby for the well heeled.
Thank the heavens you aren't into cycling. That is PURELY a sport for the well-heeled anymore, as is triathlon, as are so many other things.
It sure seems to but doesn't have to. I have noticed a lot of my white collar colleagues (I'm a CIO in the finance sector) have hobbies that's involved health like running, triathlon, rowing, and hiking. Meanwhile most of my more Blue collar friends spend their free time camping, being in boats, it just drinking in the yard.
There are exceptions to either of course, for example one of the fastest people I personally know works in a warehouse, but for some reason the stereotype of blue collar not caring about getting out and doing fitness in their spare time seems to hold true.
The weird thing is a lot of these blue color people rely on their bodies for their work. They should be the ones getting massages and seeing chiropractors and staying in shape. I could become a cripple tomorrow and still do my job just as well but a bricklayer doesn't take care of their body and can't work after 50 is in a lot of trouble.