Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
My local running club is everything that is wrong with local running culture
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And I realize that I can attempt to do something about this by starting a more serious local running club, but I'm wondering if others have similar experiences.
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are you sure that it is the local running club and not a lululemon store?
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Your local sub-sub-elite hobby jogger wrote:
Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
Rich white folks like to run too, and most clubs in your early 30's and up are for social purposes anyway. I suggest training on your own or finding a new group. When anyone with two legs can run, it makes for a very inclusive "culture". -
Soooo, other than a post-college running club that you'd find in a large city, you pretty much described 99.9% of all local running clubs. Congrats. Sorry that people have lives outside of running and don't want to talk running all day, all the time. There are a lot more runners in the 8 minute to 10 minute mile range than there are sub 8 minute mile. Is it sad? Maybe..but again, at least they are out there doing something and not watching TV/sitting inside all day
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Your local sub-sub-elite hobby jogger wrote:
Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
Why did you feel that you had the need to mention someone's color of their skin? So bizarre. -
Your local sub-sub-elite hobby jogger wrote:
Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
Other than the sport being very white. I have not had this experience at all in the 3-4 running groups that I run with (3 different cities/towns). Apart from
G1 - not concerned with competitive scene(or at least not any conversation about), main conversation isnt always running
G2 - not super concerned about getting faster but still lots of talk on training/running, I'm quicker than most (all?) here
G3/G4 - opposite of your list
I've had a very positive experience in post collegiate running -
the average person has a VO2 Max of 45 and will never be even remotely competitive. How else would you expect them to behave?
*you* are the weird one. -
You judge by skin color and income? Why are things bad for running?
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Your local sub-sub-elite hobby jogger wrote:
Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
This sounds like the Boulder Road Runners for sure. My only hangup is that you didn't mention Frasca or coffee. -
You're in a weird in-between group. You're not really fast, and you definitely aren't slow in the larger world of runners. That can make it hard to run with the right people. The slow people aren't invested at the same level as you, and their motivation isn't the same. But you're also not really fast enough to be on any type of elite team, so your access to those types of runners is limited. I fit into this same category. Its rough, especially when you have to slow down to 9:30's just to run with someone, its almost not worth the effort.
In the past, I was involved with a group that had everything from elite runners to people just looking to get some exercise. I had the opportunity to run with people of all sorts of talent levels, and we'd frequently hang out after runs. I'd say on average we talked about running less than 5% of the time. Its honestly just not that interesting after awhile. Hell, this is a running message board, and I'd say only 50% of the threads are even about running, and 90% of those are completely redundant. I don't think this is a bad thing, its good for your life outside of running.
I do understand what you're saying though, there's not many options for a semi-serious runner. -
Korean American wrote:
Your local sub-sub-elite hobby jogger wrote:
Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
Why did you feel that you had the need to mention someone's color of their skin? So bizarre.
Not really bizarre. I tried the local running club and found the same to be true in a largely nonwhite city. When the city demographics are 60% or so white and the club is 100% white, it’s worth noting.
The rest of my experience was similar to OP’s. The conversations were identical to the ones at my monthly HOA meetings. -
Lots of hot BBWs with big butts in running clubs.
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I wanted to join a local running club (read: hobby jogger club) and asked them on Facebook if they have any smaller groups or special workouts for faster runners who can run the mile in under 6 minutes and the 5k in under 20 minutes. Guess what they told me? They told me to join their special half marathon road racers group, which has their "best" runners. I was thinking, longer does not mean faster!
The following week, I actually checked out the group, and it turned out they were all very slow runners who just wanted to finish the half marathon in any time and didn't care about whether their time would be 2-3+ hours. I was appalled.
Back to running by myself again. Sigh. -
Not A Therapist... wrote:
There are a lot more runners in the 8 minute to 10 minute mile range than there are sub 8 minute mile.
Finally, a poster here who understands how slow the Average Joe actually is, and draws the line at 8 minutes rather than 5 minutes for the mile.
How would the average LRC elitist snob even be able to stand such clubs? According to them, a 5:01 dude is a pathetic hobby jogger who has no future since he can't even break 5 minutes for the mile. But in real life, most of these hobby joggers can't even break 8 minutes.
Welcome to the real world outside LRC. -
Why don't you tell them what you just posted here?
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Not in a running club wrote:
Korean American wrote:
Your local sub-sub-elite hobby jogger wrote:
Got involved with my local running club earlier this year to meet some other runners and hopefully meet some faster runners to train with. The club epitomizes everything that bothers me about modern running culture. Some highlights:
-It's a rarity that I find anyone that actually follows the competitive running scene. Maybe once every few months.
-The primary things that people care about with road races are the finishers' medals and the swag. And people barely enter races, by the way.
-Pretty much nobody is concerned with running faster. Or talking about training or running in general.
-The main topic of conversation always seems to veer towards peoples' houses or the housing market in general.
-The demographics are overwhelmingly wealthy, probably top 5%-10% of income, and everyone seems casually unaware of this. Also white, very white.
-My training pace is about 7 min/mile and I am by far the fastest runner at the weekly runs. I'm not even that fast, I get roasted at any road race or open meet with college kids.
Why did you feel that you had the need to mention someone's color of their skin? So bizarre.
Not really bizarre. I tried the local running club and found the same to be true in a largely nonwhite city. When the city demographics are 60% or so white and the club is 100% white, it’s worth noting.
The rest of my experience was similar to OP’s. The conversations were identical to the ones at my monthly HOA meetings.
What’s the colour make-up at the basketball courts?
Sick of these STUPID posts. Morans. -
3/10
Got a few decent bites. -
Start your own Fast Elite Running Club, chances are you know the 6-10 fast people in your town. Now you can all get together and wear the same singlet at the local road races.
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I have completely different experience with my local running club. Very positive experience.
Tbh I'm quite shocked by the negativity and bitterness of this forum, it's so different from the running community I interact with in real life.
