Annoying, but... whatever (Read 1558 times)

Background: Everyone in my office knows I run/race a lot and they hear a lot about my various exploits quite a bit. There are probably 2 other runners who race regularly and one woman who in her prime was a 2:45 marathoner, in my office of ~70 people. Yesterday (and this has happened a few times in the recent past) I had the following conversation with a co-worker that left me a little annoyed, but I didn't saying anything for fear of sounding like a dick, or worse, discouraging his running. Co-worker: Dave, I went running yesterday Me: That's great! How was it? CW: Great, didn't hurt too bad, felt good actually to get some miles in. Me: Oh? Nice. How far'd ya go? CW: About 18 minutes... You know, 3 miles, maybe more. Me: 3 Miles huh? wow, you were cruisin'. That's a nice pace. How'd you measure it? CW: Well, you know, that's what I usually run, 3 miles in 18 minutes. Me: Wow, you realize that's pretty fast don't you? If you were to enter most races, you'd probably place in your age group. CW: Yeah, it's not that fast though, you know, I'm just runnin what's comfortable. Me: Well, you'd probably beat me in a 5K CW: Yeah, well, I have long legs (which he does, he's well over 6 feet, but not sure the last time that helped someone run faster) At this point I back off and instead offer more encouragement (like, be sure you stretch!) and then end the coversaiton. For anyone reading this and wondering what the problem is (if it is not obvious)... This guy, while young (23ish) and in fairly good shape for someone who runs a few times in a month seems to have little to no idea how to judge distance. There's no way he's running a "comfortable" 6 minute pace over 3 miles with no training. It's really no big deal in the scheme of things, but then I dwell on it, and it erks me a bit. I've offered sites to him like mapmyrun or walkjogrun so he could see his actual distance, but he never remembers the sites, nor probably cares. And neither should I. But a small part of me does (obviously, or I wouldn't be writing this). I really do like the fact that he IS running, and I'm not in competition with him anyway, so his lack of distance understanding is really of no consequence. I just I just wanted to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading

Tell him you'd like to run together sometime.

I have offered to run with him, but he only runs out in Long Island, and it's quite a trek for me to put in 18 minutes of speedwork

Then there's that even more annoying and horrifying possibility that he really is that fast.

Congratulate him on how well he's running and move on with life... it's not a big deal. At least he wasn't telling you that your running would ruin your knees. - Chris (in Boulder, where EVERYONE kicks my ass running... Olympians, world champions, moms with jogging strollers, decrepit hound dogs, and 80 year old men doing tempo work at sub-6 min miles).

When I first started running my friend from work invited me to run with her on her 3 mile loop. We were preparing for a 5K. I was feeling pretty please because I fairly quickly got to the point where I could run it non-stop. So on my off day I mapped out a 3 mile run at home and confidently went out. Fuuuuuuuuuuudge. Brought my bike to work one day to map our running route. Not quite 2 miles. Most of the time when stuff like that happens you just have to and let it go. But I understand sometimes why it is annoying. My friend is in that stage of rapidly improving on her running and PersonX was asking her about her 5K time and being modest she said ~23 minutes (its actually ~22:50) and PersonX said "Oh, thats not too bad, thats pretty close to what I ran when I did 5K's. I cant quite remember my time, but I know it was right around 22 minutes" Oozing condescension. So she looked it up. It was 27 minutes.

I had a similar conversation with someone a while back. They did a local 10k race over the weekend, he said he was cruising along and it wasn't a fast pace. He claimed to do the race in about 36 mins. He kept playing it down saying it wasn't fast, he used to row in college and used to run a lot. I looked up his results, he did run it in 36 mins, but the race was a 5k.

I looked up his results, he did run it in 36 mins, but the race was a 5k.

Now that is funny stuff. Great story.