The Weakly: Jogging, yoga, Olympic Trials, and a running novelist

Why does 'jogging' achieve such a visceral reaction? That's this week's Big Question. How fun! Also: how yoga makes you fast enough to reach the Olympic Trials, and more about running and creativity.

BIG Q: What is jogging?

I was talking about “going for a jog” the other day, and a fellow run club person overheard me and chided me with a, “We don’t jog. We run.”

When we talk about running purposefully slowly these days, we talk with intention about Zone 2 training runs because science is good, and we talk about Long Slow Distance runs to allude to the cool cachet of taking illegal drugs. We don’t just go for a jog, do we.

jog
/jäɡ/

verb - gerund or present participle: jogging

run at a steady gentle pace, especially on a regular basis as a form of physical exercise.

That sounds a lot like what I do on my long runs! I find it very interesting how language can become unfashionable.

Maybe it comes from the vague pejorative of ‘hobby jogger,’ used to refer to people who run 5k ‘fun runs.’ There’s a suggestion that these are not serious people. Tell that to someone running a sub-20-minute 5k at 6.30am on a Sunday morning, perhaps.

I believe these things are all cyclical, though, so mainly I wond…