Jog your commute?

The Sacramento Bee's Sam McManis ran an interesting article today on a rare commuting niche: the route runner.

Apparently, there's a small group of commuters in the region - mostly marathon enthusiasts - who run their commute home and back. Doesn't sound too bad, until you realize some of these folks are running 36-mile round trips five days a week.

Wait, what?


Surely not for everyone, but as a insouciant runner, the story made me perk up. The article caught my attention in the same way Japanese author Haruki Murakami's mini-memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running made me take note.

Admittedly, Murakami's book is still on my reading list and you won't see me jogging my way to campus any time soon. But I can agree the idea of the commute jog is novel. And as McManis coyly notes, cycling is soooo 2007.

You probably won't see the fixie kids giving up their bikes for a fresh pair of New Balances, but as the article observes, jogging subculture is as vibrant as any other fitness-oriented subculture. It just happens to be a little sweatier.

Who knows, maybe this will be more common at Sacramento State when they get that Recreation and Wellness Center up and running. Assuming of course, the center has public showers.