Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
There's another option, he could pursue another degree at BYU and be a mid 20's freshman with 5+ years of eligibility.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
You do know that is not at all how his life would be if he continued running in Japan's system, right?
So why does everyone else seem to think it is such a hilarious and accurate post?
I don't know much about how the best japanese pros live and what kind of money they make, but I would assume, since marathoning is so huge in their country, that a guy with the potential to start banging out some 204-high marathons and winning $ at lots of shorter road races would do o okay financially, and get tons of reverence. Which sounds nothing like the life "the post of the year" envisions for him if he continued running.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
This post sounds like jealousy of someone that didn't have the talent to run fast, pretending you didn't want to make those sacrifices anyway. You'd rather work a desk job for 40 years and then retire, rather than try to become an OLYMPIAN? Or to break national records and become immortalized as an athlete?
He can get extremely good pro contracts with a 2:06 PR. It would be the greatest waste of talent to quit now, he's still really young.
Work and run at the same time like every other marathoner in the world.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
Post of the year.
I'm laughing so hard. Normally I say you have to be logged into to win a free shirt but I might send you a free shirt since this was so good.
Email me and I'll think about it. Tell me where you are posting from so I can verify it.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
This post sounds like jealousy of someone that didn't have the talent to run fast, pretending you didn't want to make those sacrifices anyway. You'd rather work a desk job for 40 years and then retire, rather than try to become an OLYMPIAN? Or to break national records and become immortalized as an athlete?
He can get extremely good pro contracts with a 2:06 PR. It would be the greatest waste of talent to quit now, he's still really young.
Work and run at the same time like every other marathoner in the world.
Naw, it's easy to make the case that he can be satisfied that he's pretty well maxed his talent. Fantastic time but it's not like he won his minor domestic race with that effort. Forget the American perspective that has pros here typically approach the marathon either under-prepared or overcooked on the downside. Academic life alone in Japan is a real grind in comparison to what is typical in the USA. Compound that with being a record-setting Hakone Ekiden star and by your early 20s you might be ready to leave that monotonous specialization behind to move onto more adult life pursuits. Becoming a man means putting away childish things. He surely will get generous offers to join corporate teams, should he walk back his decision to retire.
Just for some added context, he already has a job lined up with one of the largest insurance companies in Japan. He might just be burnt out from training so hard for so long. However, plenty of pro-Japanese marathon runners have said they were retiring only to stick around for another 5 years.
Just for some added context, he already has a job lined up with one of the largest insurance companies in Japan. He might just be burnt out from training so hard for so long. However, plenty of pro-Japanese marathon runners have said they were retiring only to stick around for another 5 years.
I thought that just about all of the top Japanese marathoners (with the notable exception of Yuki Kawauchi) ran on corporate teams as employees.
You do know that is not at all how his life would be if he continued running in Japan's system, right?
So why does everyone else seem to think it is such a hilarious and accurate post?
I don't know much about how the best japanese pros live and what kind of money they make, but I would assume, since marathoning is so huge in their country, that a guy with the potential to start banging out some 204-high marathons and winning $ at lots of shorter road races would do o okay financially, and get tons of reverence. Which sounds nothing like the life "the post of the year" envisions for him if he continued running.
🤔
I don't know why so many people think it's a hilarious and accurate post. I suspect it's because they don't know much about how the best Japanese pros live and what kind of money they make. Nearly all of them are hired by corporations that sponsor running teams. They're given the same salaries as "normal" corporate employees but have reduced hours in their workdays and get considerable time off to travel to races and training camps. At the end of their running careers they generally move to full time working hours with the company they ran for.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
This post sounds like jealousy of someone that didn't have the talent to run fast, pretending you didn't want to make those sacrifices anyway. You'd rather work a desk job for 40 years and then retire, rather than try to become an OLYMPIAN? Or to break national records and become immortalized as an athlete?
He can get extremely good pro contracts with a 2:06 PR. It would be the greatest waste of talent to quit now, he's still really young.
Work and run at the same time like every other marathoner in the world.
Steve Jones ran 2:07.xx a long way pre super-shoes while working as an aircraft mechanic in the RAF, so with a sympathetic desk job, he could probably have the best of both worlds.
Just for some added context, he already has a job lined up with one of the largest insurance companies in Japan. He might just be burnt out from training so hard for so long. However, plenty of pro-Japanese marathon runners have said they were retiring only to stick around for another 5 years.
I thought that just about all of the top Japanese marathoners (with the notable exception of Yuki Kawauchi) ran on corporate teams as employees.
Most do, but there are exceptions. You have to remember, being on a corporate team usually keeps you tied down to ekidens, with the exception of Osako, who has his own Nike sponsor. Yuma Morii, who got 8th at Boston last year, is a non-professional. Hibiki Yoshida, one of the top university runners graduating this year, will sign as a pro, independent from a corporate team, to race trail and road marathons.
Wouldn't be the first time here I'm glad about that either.
Everyone else here would be glad if you just shut the heck up when you're confused and incurious rather than act an obtuse old fool.
I've spent decades earning the right to be an obtuse old fool. No way I'm giving it up. And there might be a person or two who wants to know how life is different for Japanese distance runners than for those in most other countries what with this being a running board.
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
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But that’s only 3 mins faster than the woman’s world record. It is very good but he will have a nicer life as a salaried employee or other type of say entrepreneur and their is no reason he can do what he wants as a “citizen” runner. The sport just ain’t lucrative enough unless you are at the very top to do it as a full time job for a long span of time. I make 300k per year to work less than 100 hours per month; in fact the FAA won’t even legally allow me to fly more than 1000 hours jn a year——and I just need to NOT fail to keep my job; excellence is not a continued requirement for my employment (but of course I strive for it) an annual simulator flight skills check is all I don’t have to be great at what I do I just can’t be intolerably bad and I still get paid—-not so much for a pro runner; it’s a lot of pressure without a lot of financial upside. Some may also perform more rested and ready when not stressing about finances. I’m surprised actually more top level runners in the US don’t have good “normal” jobs with their running as having financial means opens doors and enables more stability.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
Now that's a pretty narrow-minded, American-centric view of things. He could have run for just about any Japanese corporate team (just as many top African runners do). But he decided that wasn't for him.
He made it look anything but easy. He was obviously in excruciating pain the last couple kilometers. He's just one extremely tough little mofo. That's why he just set the record for the 5th leg of the Hakone Ekiden, which has been run for 101 years. Nearly all of that leg is run up the side of a mountain.
Why would you pass on the opportunity to live in a crappy apartment with roommates in an expensive altitude town until you are 35? A work career over a life of WIC benefits and begging for comped entries, flights, and two star hotel rooms? Spending your days on LRC starting rumors about your competition or pretending to be your own fan club president?
These Japanese runners don’t seem to understand how it’s supposed to work!
Now that's a pretty narrow-minded, American-centric view of things.
Yeah, that's the joke. We foster illusions of grandeur out of relatively modest results and pass on more lucrative paths to "chase the dream." It's part of the "if it feels good, do it" improvidence lotus-eating ethos popularized by boomers which has quite messed us up.
Now that's a pretty narrow-minded, American-centric view of things.
Yeah, that's the joke. We foster illusions of grandeur out of relatively modest results and pass on more lucrative paths to "chase the dream." It's part of the "if it feels good, do it" improvidence lotus-eating ethos popularized by boomers which has quite messed us up.
Maybe there is some joke here that some get and others don't. A Japanese runner with a 2:06 marathon is going to go to work for some company, be given reduced hours so he can train and race, and make what he'd make if he worked for that company but didn't run. Maybe he's done as much running and racing as he wants and is just ready to be done. That happens. But it's stupid to suggest it's because he doesn't want to live at the poverty line so he can keep running seriously. And it may be even sillier to suggest that an American who runs 2:06 for the marathon is going to need to live in a cramped apartment and get food stamps. He'd be a lock for a healthy shoe deal and some very nice appearance money from US road races and probably track meets. Very few recent college grads would start off with salaries that come close to matching what this hypothetical 2:06 guy would make.
Then there's the idea that all that matters in terms of what you do with your life is how much it pays whether no matter how happy or unhappy you are about doing it. If that's what you want to do it's your business but dreading what you need to do on nearly every workday because it is a more lucrative path doesn't seem like much of a life.
Maybe I am showing myself to be out of touch here. I don't really care. If someone actually wants to explain why I'm out of touch I'd be interested.
This post was edited 17 minutes after it was posted.
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