So my twitter bio says "professional hobby jogger" and for the first time ever someone asked me what a hobby jogger was. I spent several minutes fumbling words around in an attempt to find the perfect description of a hobby jogger.
Help me out so I can be more prepared next time.
No compensation, no athletic scholarship, no hopes of hitting Olympic qualifiers = hobby jogger
Someone who runs for exercise or for social purposes instead of competition and improvement. If you ask them their PRs, they will tell you an approximation give or take 3 minutes for a 5k, 20 minutes for a marathon (because those are the only distances hobby joggers race). A true runner will tell you their exact time to the hundredth of a second, verifiable on Athlinks or Milesplit.
Simple. The hobby jogger is not a virgin unlike the true runner.
A runner wants to get faster. They do this by optimizing their training to get faster.
A hobbyjogger also wants to get faster. They do this by trying harder on each successive jog, and doing the occasional tempo fartlek they read that week in runnersworld.
Easy. A hobby jogger bounces up and down at stoplights. A runner just stands there looking pissed.
1:50, 3:40, 3:50, 8:10, 13:30, 29:00 are the hobby jogger/runner cut-offs.
Wearing a headband, quadruple fuel belt, fitbit, hr monitor, watch, under armor shirt/hat, while bouncing up and down at that stop light taking a gel.
Wilson Kiphobbyo wrote:
1:50, 3:40, 3:50, 8:10, 13:30, 29:00 are the hobby jogger/runner cut-offs.
You'll notice they're slightly slower than the letsrun posting standards.
10k, half, and full?
Zambian wrote:
Easy. A hobby jogger bounces up and down at stoplights. A runner just stands there looking pissed.
Classic +10
Hobby joggers believe running a BQ is equal to running an OT qualifier in terms of prestige and impressiveness.
Someone who jogs as a hobby.
Someone who is not on letsrun.
Someone who needs distraction from running--like music for the most part but also other gadgets. Like you need data or to get something concrete out of the run.
Real runners don't eat meat because they care about their health. Hobby joggers have a chicken wing waiting for them at mile 9 of their half marathon as motivation and for fuel to finish strong!
Someone who thinks speed work is sub 10:00/mile pace.
It's about attitude as much as pace.
As mentioned the attitude is that the primary reasons to runs are for fun, fitness, social interaction, and bling. Things like time, place, PRs, workouts, consistency, competitiveness are not in the thought/planning process or they are secondary.
The pace thing is harder to define, but I'll go with what is jogging? A jogger would be someone slower than what a decent runner would do for an easy recovery run. What's a decent runner? I'd say Sub 16 for males and 17:30 for females is quite decent, if not very good. Sure they are several minutes off the world's best but they would still easily be 1 percenters in the general running population. So that's defined, what's their easy pace for a recovery run? I'd say low 7s for the male, high 7s for the female.
That makes 22 minutes and about 24 for a 5K. But to tell the truth, you could put it at 20 and 22 respectively. Even then, you still find people that are basically hobby joggers doing well under 20 minutes for 5K or even low 3 for the marathon.
BQ standards don't count, at least current because that's a relatively attainable holy grail for a lot of them.
Hobby joggers have careers and responsibilities outside of running. True runners are either in college or pros. My favorites on this board are those that still try to train like a pro even though they lack the talent and end up sacrificing their career, family or relationship (or end up living in their parent's basement).
Multiple finisher medalist.
Gel master.
Do you want a motto too?
"No walking today"