Alsu Kurmasheva: Behind Bars, running was freedom walking, there’s a clear way of doing so: when walking, one foot is always in contact with the ground; when running, the subject becomes airborne, if only for a fraction of a second. That’s why race walkers are disqualified if they’re adjudged to have left terra firma at any point during a race.
When it comes to the difference between running and jogging, though, we’re on shakier ground. One, of course, sounds faster and more serious than the other. But the difference doesn’t appear to be measurable. When does a jog become a run? And why do some people identify as joggers, while for others, the ‘J word’ is an unbearable insult? Let’s have a look at how this distinction arrived in the first place…
Where does the term ‘jogging’ come from?
For the origins of the word ‘jog’, we must go back to 16th century England, when the term ‘shoggen’ meant ‘to sholt, jerk or shake’. However, it wasn’t until the 1970s that jogging became widely popular. This was thanks to the ‘running boom’ of that decade and the publication of influential books such as Nike founder Bill Bowerman’s Jogging and Jim Fixx’s This is the average 10K finish time. Until then, most people had viewed running as the reserve of athletes. Now, there was a sense that anyone could run (or, indeed, jog) – although women wouldn’t be allowed to compete in the Olympic marathon until 1984.
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What does jogging mean?
Speaking to Runner’s World, the late Geoff Nunberg, a renowned linguist, noted that when it became popular in the 1970s, the term ‘jogger’ described ‘someone who runs for fitness, perhaps not too energetically’.
That seems a sensible starting point, but it’s important to note that such a person might justifiably also associate as a runner. There’s no established dividing line between the two – it’s just linguistics.
Is jogging different to running?
There’s no material difference between jogging and running. However, some runners might use the terms to differentiate between paces or effort levels.
Runners World Club: Sub-4:00 marathon plan easy-effort running. The pace of people’s easy efforts will vary widely depending on fitness, of course, but it is possible to make some distinctions between easy and hard efforts.
Easy running (or jogging, if you prefer) produces less muskuloskeletal stress, burns fewer calories per minute and keeps you in a lower heart rate zone (typically zone 2). A simple way of identifying if you’re running at an easy pace is to try to hold a conversation on the move – if you can speak in full sentences, you’re going at the right pace.
Faster running, by contrast, creates more muskuloskeletal stress, burns more calories, pushes your heart rate into zones 3, 4 or 5 and results in a longer stride.
Is there a jogging pace vs. running pace?
Despite what spurious articles on the internet suggest, there is no defined jogging pace or running pace. If you run more slowly than most, there’s no onus to identify as a jogger, either.
The same is true of easy running and hard running – these things are not defined by an external pace. Rather, it’s about what feels easy or hard to the individual runner/jogger.
In this sense, regarding yourself as a jogger or a runner is as much a psychological decision as it is a physical one.
