Time to 'jog on' if you think running is all about speed
'If you feel that you’re running, no matter how slow you’re going, no one can say you’re not' - Jim Fixx
So, here we are. Another New Year.
Maybe you’re planning on running thousands of miles, have a particular race in mind, or want to finally add strength training to your regime.
Or perhaps, for you, January 1 is just a different day. No need to get over-excited about it or do some big reset.
Whatever you plans, hopefully you’ll continue to enjoy running - whether that means winning a competitive race or simply dusting down your trainers and getting out of the door.
Twitter can be a funny place, and there is too much deliberate trolling to be sure 100% of the time if someone is being serious, but over the festive period a few posts on running caught my eye.
The general theme was that the times people run are the most important part of the sport, and that if you don’t reach certain levels you’re not actually running.
One tweeter even put numbers on it, questioning whether if you cannot run 10 miles in under 60 minutes you are really a runner at all.
Such views smack of feelings of superiority and of belittling those who cannot achieve what ‘actual runners’ can.
But in fact there if no set hard and fast rule for what is running, or what is jogging.
Many experts put the speed for jogging at between four to six miles per hour, but even this speed - considerably slower than that mentioned by the above tweeter - is simply an arbitrary line in the sand.
What is generally agreed upon is that jogging is slower and less intense than running - but when it comes to pace and any kind of definition, it is worth noting that everyone has a different ‘top’ speed to start with.
An Olympic athlete would be running much more slowly than usual, and at a lower intensity, if they were pacing seven minute miles. By the above definition, they would be jogging. But for a huge number of people such a speed is a mere dream - it certainly wouldn’t be “slower and less intense” than usual, so how can it be deemed jogging.
The distance people are covering, their age and the terrain they are running in also effects the speed at which they travel. Someone completing that 10 mile distance across muddy trails in an hour-and-a-half probably hasn’t been out for a jog.
In short, a distinction based on pace alone is too simplistic.
The practice of jogging originated in New Zealand when Olympic track coach, Dr Arthur Lydiard, suggested it as a conditioning activity for retired Olympic runners.
Dr Lydiard strongly believed people should run to benefit their health and he put his beliefs in action by forming the Auckland Jogging Club.
His work was taking on by American track and field coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman, who published his ‘A Jogger’s Manual’ in 1962. He followed this up with his classic book, ‘Jogging - A Medically Approved Fitness Program for All Ages’.
The book did not define the pace of running or jogging.
The ‘father of jogging,’ however, was Jim Fixx, the author of ‘The Complete Book of Running’.
After starting to jog aged 35, he stopped smoking and lost 50 pounds.
Incredibly and sadly, Jim Fixx’s love of running was to have a sting in the tail. At the age of just 52, he collapsed and died of a heart attack while running in Vermont.
His book made running accessible, a hobby fit for everyone rather than a sport purely for the elite.
Perhaps most notably he argued that speed did not matter: “If you feel that you’re running, no matter how slow you’re going, no one can say you’re not.”
Not even, he might well have added today, any Twitter know-alls.
He may perhaps have joined me in telling them to ‘jog on’.
Happy New Year,
Craig
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