Why do so many runners end up with Peter Pan syndrome?

Or maybe they've learned to get by on less.

This is like putting off freshman year. you don’t want to enter an office environment as a Level 1 at age 30. You’ll never catch up.

Not true. Many people go into grad school older than 30 and start fresh in a new career and make it fine. Unless you have the maturity of a 23 year old, you'll generally be regarded as more competent and quickly move up the ladder in whatever field you're in.

dang you really be touching big nerves on here! well done haha

I saw this in news media and my father saw it in the mental health field. No $ in either field but people survived due to rich spouses (the other spouse would either be in STEM or Finance). I.e. wife would be a mental health therapist and husband would be a lawyer. Same with journalism--but they never tell you that in college.

Not all of them....distance runners show that they are goal-setters. That is huge on a job app.

Maybe it's an ambition issue--some are frustrated because they may view Instagram as 'cheating' in terms of earning $, versus a traditional job and career path.

There was a huge thread on GOMI and Blogsnark about Instafluencers like Ali on the Run and HungryRunnerGirl, as well as Choi, about how these people are super-privileged and fail to acknowledge that. Laura Green (the running humor girl) is funny but to her credit she acknowledges she's lucky. Many are not as honest.

Correct--I went into a call center at age 30 after fixing my mistakes as a journalist (still annoyed about that) and succeeded for a few years, getting out of the call center at 33 and going into a provider data management role. (I left b/c they wanted to turn it back into a call center). It does work!

Girl, that's nothing compared to what you see in the horse community; I know people who have never grown up, and they're in their 60s and 70s! They just have mom and dad pay for their horse hobby - yes, I even know a woman in her 60s who still has one of her parents (who is still alive) pay for her horses.
Furthermore, I know [the same type of] people in the horse community who have a career, even a six-figure job, but spend all their $ on their horses, and have no savings.

Soooo, really which is worse? Being a "Bouldor Bro" who goes running 2x/day, or working a 9-5 but still spending every paycheck on hobbies? both is irresponsible. If they have an emergency, they STILL need someone else pay their bills b/c even if they work 9-5, they spend all their $ on hobbies.

My argument is - some people never grow up! Even if they have the outside appearance of being mature. I would argue
at least maybe the person in their 20s will grow up one day and change their ways!

There are young people with multi-million dollar inheritances, too. I wish I was one of them. LOL. But I do know someone who is essentially "set for life" (aka, has a multi-million dollar inheritance) once her grandma dies. She doesn't worry about getting a career.

Every now and again I run into something that really reminds me how old I am and this is one of those times. I have no idea of who or what anything that's capitalized in your post is. And I kind of like it because most things that remind me of how old I am involve something hurting or not working very well and this doesn't. Thanks for the laugh.

And comments about starting new careers or jobs after thirty are absolutely correct. I had grad students of all ages in my classes who were looking to do that. Most of them were over thirty, many of them much older. The oldest one at the time was about as old as I am now.

Usually it’s the guys with student loans up the wazoo, from poor families, and no money who have to start working like dogs right out of college with zero time off. And they never catch up to the slackers with money anyway because joining the rat race asap doesn’t make you rich

One time I was visiting my parents in their Florida retirement community and went for a 3 or 4 mile run. Someone much older, angrily yelled out of their golf cart, "You show off!"

I was in my mid-40's at the time, jogging at what was probably 9 min/mi pace, doing nothing special. But in that person, the mere act of my not-so-special run, triggered something. To them, my middle-aged mediocrity looked more like bold and brazen "showing off."

Jealously is a powerful emotion.

This is probably one of the most uneducated posts I have read on this beautiful website.

First, any manual labor/trade can get kind of dicey once you hit your 50s because of the physicality of the job. Lots of fields like tech have major ageism issues. Goofing off in your 20s can lock you out from higher-octane careers like law, medicine, and finance. Even if you went to college, not using your degree for 8 years basically makes it "stale" and useless. As someone that's hired dozens of people in the past few years, we always question large gaps in employment.

Most of the 65+ year olds that I've come across in my field are working because they need to, and would retire at the first chance if they hadn't mismanaged their finances over the years. I mean ffs one guy was forced to go to part time status because he literally had trouble staying wake after 1pm without a nap and wanted to work some ridiculous schedule like 4am - noon when all of our customers are in the US. Another one was diabetic and had major mobility issues, yet was still having to make 2-3 business trips a month visiting customers all over and would come back exhausted.

If you can't OTQ sitting on your a*s in a cubicle 40 hours a week, then bro I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it probably ain't gonna ever happen.

These days most change careers at least 2-3 times. Not unusual to start a new career later in life. I know plenty starting businesses after age 65.

in business this is called "sunk cost", people dont want to stop a project they invested already so much in, even when it makes no sense any more....

Sometimes it is best to cut your losses and move on...

The main advantage of running training is that it teaches you to deal with pain and suffering, this can be good in buisness and many other challanges in life, put one can also "run away" from ones problems instead of dealing with them.

Who cares? Life is short. If spending their youth running makes them happy, great.

Work will always be there, people regularly start new careers and families in their 30s and beyond, especially if they have a degree.

I was never going to be elite but I wish I would have ground it out for a few more years after college. Having run a few pro meets and breaking 4 in the mile would be great experiences.

This is a great point, I went through the same thing. Looking back, i realize I was depressed for a couple of years after college because of losing that identity.

College athletic programs should really have some type of exit counseling for graduating student athletes.