Running as a competitive hobby must have the least productive training of any hobby

Running is beautifully illogical. As an American I'm proud of not embracing the metric system. I count miles, not kilometers. Ed Whitlock circled his cemetery route 3 hours a day not for any rational reason. Time means nothing and everything.

M.A.G.A...

If you spent equal time doing another activity you'd likely get to the same level that you are in running. Obviously you'd get better at chess than your friends who don't play, but is that impressive? Do you think people care more about your 1900 chess ranking than your 16:30 5k? Probably not.

The point is that you should be doing it if you like it. Hobbies are not meant to be practical. It's great if they are, but if that's your only intention go back to school or get a new job.

The answer is obvious wrote:

If you spent equal time doing another activity you'd likely get to the same level that you are in running. Obviously you'd get better at chess than your friends who don't play, but is that impressive? Do you think people care more about your 1900 chess ranking than your 16:30 5k? Probably not.

The point is that you should be doing it if you like it. Hobbies are not meant to be practical. It's great if they are, but if that's your only intention go back to school or get a new job.

You really have to think about this from the perspective of jamin. What is important to jamin? Money, status, looking good, success with women, and generally being interesting, attractive, desired. A serious running hobby with get you fit, but you will also look emaciated. With running as a hobby, you won't make money, your won't have better status except among other running dweebs, you won't be more attractive to the ladies, you don't develop skills that help you elsewhere, and almost nobody is interested in your running. Yes, running has benefits, but the benefit are rarely anything health benefits.

For you, it’s different because you have nothing else going on in your life.

For myself, I have a family, a high net worth, lots of international travel, and other hobbies. Yet...I still have faster PR’s than you and I maxed out at 60 mpw due to having a life.

Why don’t you cash in your chips and get a life?

I play bluegrass guitar, which is amazingly fun and much better than running, but *assuming* you're going to do some sort of physical fitness training running is great.

Here are its qualities:

a) cheap

b) able to be done anywhere

c) has regular public competitions that give you motivation

d) is done by many, many people (girls!)

e) allows you to enjoy the outdoors

f) apparently according to studies sharpens your mind, lengthens your life, etc

I personally love the stress reducing aspect of running, and the fast times are a bonus. But it's also effectively a miracle drug ... if you could bottle it, you'd be a billionaire overnight:

https://www.alzheimers.net/12-29-14-running-to-lower-alzheimers-risk/

Jamin, you are complaining that running 70mpw takes too much time and your example of an activity that is far more efficient is chess, which you claim can be given 10 hours per week?

Exactly how slow are you running 70mpw? Taking into account some stretching time, rest intervals on hard days, etc, it should still be possible to do it in 12 hours a week or so, if you're efficient. The actual running should only be 8 hours if you are averaging just under 7 minute pace.

There have been plenty of recent examples of national level runners with full time jobs. It can be done very well in a reasonable amount of time.

If 70mpw is taking too much of your time ,then you're doing something wrong. I have three other hobbies, running is 70mpw is not a huge commitment. A lot of people spend 1-1.5hrs on their phone every morning checking facebook,instagram etc, while i'm running for the same time. Stop making excuses lol. There is plenty of time in the day, people don't spend it wisely.

almost as worthless an activity as trolling

Jamin is right, for once. That's also why I don't race anymore. At first I did it to fit in with the cool kids (adults), but then realized how much of a waste of time and effort it was. I was mediocre, meaning I could qualify for Boston, but I couldn't beat someone who actually was my definition of fast.

Recently, I have been training a 13 year old who has a lot of potential. I told him that eventually he'll have to make a decision. If he finds out he's one of the best, then he'll either have to go all-in or it's just a waste of time and he might as well quit and do something productive.

So, it's bad because it requires you to:

*exercise

*set time aside for yourself

*clean your clothes once per week

*maintain a healthy diet

Yeah, Jamin. Really good points, man.

vivalarepublica wrote:

You really have to think about this from the perspective of jamin. What is important to jamin? Money, status, looking good, success with women, and generally being interesting, attractive, desired. A serious running hobby with get you fit, but you will also look emaciated. With running as a hobby, you won't make money, your won't have better status except among other running dweebs, you won't be more attractive to the ladies, you don't develop skills that help you elsewhere, and almost nobody is interested in your running. Yes, running has benefits, but the benefit are rarely anything health benefits.

If these are your feelings on running, you might be hanging around with the wrong crowd. My coworkers and friends are genuinely interested in my running. They ask me about it regularly to the point where I almost get sick of talking about it (almost... not quite). They always want to know about my upcoming races and after I run a race, I spend a large portion of the following Monday at work recounting my efforts because everyone that I see asks. Not only that, they all already know my times because they text me the night before asking for my tracking number. If tracking is not available, they ask if there is a link that they can check for results. Many of them will even text me 20 minutes after the listed 5k start time inquiring about my finish if results are posted immediately.

Maybe I just have nice friends and colleagues? Or maybe you have crappy ones? I don't know.

1. If you want to be lazy, running isn't for you. You can go play wow or something all day and barely expend any calories if the physical effort is too much. But you'll find humans run naturally and running takes a lot less effort than swimming or triathlon.

2. Way less than used for cycling, swimming, or triathlon. Running only takes a lot of time when you would replace it with no physical activity. If you weren't running 60-90 mins, what would you do, watch an extra episode of some show on netflix?

3. I hope you do laundry anyways

4. You have to eat anyways. If you run, you can eat a lot more than a sedentary person while not getting fat.

If you want to play chess instead of run, do it. It may surprise you, but you can be good at both chess and running. And unlike chess, you can actually find people who like your hobby as much as you. Maybe somewhere like Seattle has chess club meetups, but in most of the US, you could be the top chess player in your town just by playing a few games a week against a computer because no one else is playing.

I don't really understand the point of this thread. Stop running and play chess if that's what you enjoy .

I don't know where you get the impression people are only improving 15 secs over 5k. That might be the point if they have long term injuries or something, but a lot of people improve a lot more than that after college. Maybe someone who has already broken 14 only improves that much. But 15 seconds is huge to a guy who has run 13:55. Checkmate.

Look at the reward of excelling at running vs excelling at chess. Running = you're fit, you get a high from beating people less fit, people think you are attractive.

Chess - you're ability seems cool to a tiny community of serious chess players. How many are in the US, a couple thousand? You have to put in time outside of your hobby to remain healthy.

Injury, time out, and decline with age shouldn't be part of the equation with running because there is masters competition, cross training, and doctors and therapists who can help you heal. If you're injured so much, you're constantly worried about it, you are training wrong, get a coach.

Improvement in chess isn't a straight line up. Once you get good, it will take a hell lot more time to improve to beat a player just a couple ranks ahead of you than it will in running. Plus since there is no way to really measure chess skill, like running skill you won't even see anything from your improvement, just one day you'll win a match you would have lost a few years ago, but you won't know if you could have beaten the other guy then or not.

You sound like my wife. She doesn't like that I run.

Chess isn't a good analogy. Triathlon is a better analogy for spending a lot of training time for minimal results, especially for moving from average to above average levels.

Some of my friends spend twice as much time each week training for triathlons than I do training for running, yet they're only a little above mid-packers.

Hey, if you want to believe that you have nicer friends and colleagues, great, you can have them.

These are not my genuine feelings on running, I was speaking from the perspective of jamin in that response. I have different reasons for running. I like to do it, have fun, feel good, and get a bit of admiration while doing something I like and am good at. I have not found another physical activity that I like better.

You forgot to mention each round of golf takes 4 hours. 5 hours if you get stuck behind a group of slow seniors. I love golfers because it makes my running look like nothing by comparison. I bring this up to my wife all the time. We only take 4 hours to run, well never. My marathons are all 3 hours or less.

Compare to another hobby like chess. You could become very good at chess of you invested 10 hours per week.

if you only had 10 hours per week to spend on chess you would most likely plateau at the level of a club player in the middle of your local league team. your ELO rating would probably not get much over 1800. this is not, by any reasonable measure, "very good at chess."

cheers.