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 wonder when ‘jogging’ will become retro-cool enough to be reclaimed by the running community. What do you think? Tell me below etc.
Writers Who Run:
Can you believe that people just write novels. It’s beyond me. I’ve written tens of thousands of magazine articles, ghostwritten a small handful of books, and written a couple of chapters that I’m really proud of, but a novel? Of fiction? It’s an amazing thing to me.
Luckily, some people lay out the whole process. Dr. Kathleen Waller, for instance, is midway through serializing her latest novel, An Interpreter in Vienna, and you can read it right here. A decorated writer who found fiction through academia, the way she is able to construct and deconstruct explanations of the world of literature is fascinating.
A competitive runner in high school who enjoys pushing herself along with teammates beside her as well as coaching (she took a high school team to being All-State Champions), and is currently being encouraged into a move into ultrarunning training, Kate also thinks deeply about running, so I thought I would ask her a little more about that.
What do you feel when you run?
“Running helps me feel free, calm, motivated. I do think I meditate on runs sometimes. Alternatively, I use a run to catch up with a friend or think about how to approach a challenge. It's my totally present time and energizes me in this way.”
How does running help your creative process?
“It helps to center me and allows my mind to relax. I think that a lot of writing is about being present, and we can discover this feeling through running if we're not always focused on times and PBs and places. For me, it's really about the feeling -- the strength of mind and body and the freedom.”
Please go forth and read Dr Waller’s very, very good words on running.
Go read it! I hope you love it as well.
Last week on Running Sucks
I wrote about Progress Running Club, a store in East London. More specifically, I wrote about Jimi Harrison - the chap who’s architecting Progress’s position in running culture, AND is at the forefront of trail running’s inclusion in the Olympic Games.
Read about the man who can do both.
Running culture IS the new streetwear
Running culture is the new streetwear. That’s the word, isn’t it? You’ve obviously been reading about the great run clubs around the world here on Running Sucks for the past year and a bit, but the boom in social run clubs has become the kind of hot topic that gets into the mainstream press seemingly every day now. One that piqued my interest earlier thi…
Last YEAR on Running Sucks
Read about how yoga is fantastic for runners with Olympic trialist and yoga Ann Mazur. Her IG handle says Runners Love Yoga. I agree!
It’s fun for me to delve into the Running Sucks archives, because 1) it means I’ve built something with enough depth to have an archive, 2) I get to refresh my brain on how I was thinking a year ago, and 3) I might introduce you to something new. Three good things.
Elsewhere on Substack:
If you’re interested in the Olympic Trials, you can do a lot worse than to sign up for updates from
by Alison Wade. It’s the most thorough reporting on women’s running on the internet imho, and it’s right here.
Running Sucks Haiku of the Week
Forgot I’d signed up
For a relay this weekend.
Lots of fun with friends.
Have I trained for this race? No! Did I think I would when I signed up? Also no! But my friend made a team for a race through Central Los Angeles, so who was I to say no? All we want to do, after all, is play outside with our friends (and create cool shit).
Housekeeping
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Thanks for reading
- Raz
I have to agree: I hate it when people ask if im going for a jog, because it does seem like they’re trying to make a diminutive out of what I’m about to go do, which is obviously infuriating.
I think the difference between slow runs and jogs is that slow runs are intentional, whereas jogs just seem like something you might do occasionally or without much concentration. They’re the window-shopping of running.