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| This is me during my first half marathon. I'm a swinger. A leg swinger, that is. |
My hands-down favorite thing about runners is how differently we all do the same thing. Yeah, we're all running, but sometimes comparing two people's running styles is equivalent to finding similarities between Jonathan Safran Foer and Jane Austen - I love them both and they are both two of my favorite novelists, but you could never confuse one for the other based on what they've written.
Apples and oranges, people.
Sorry for the analogy - I'm an English major, remember?
Therefore, I've compiled a list of running styles that I've observed during my tenure as a runner, and I think it captures the spectrum.
Trotters
Totters are the people that you pass on the path who make you double-take, and when you make awkward eye contact on that second glance, he or she looks unbearably happy to be running. Trotters are fast but unassuming; talented but not showy. Trotters are the runners that make running seem like fun.
Chuggers
Chuggers are running with purpose. Most chuggers tend to be commuters, giving themselves away when they chug past you and you see an aerodynamic backpack strapped to their shoulders. Chuggers are all about breathing too, matching their short, powerful strides with an equally purposeful exhalation. If you have any interest in learning how to be a chugger, go to London - so many chuggers huffing to and from the Tube.
Lopers
Lopers have the typical "runner body" but aren't naturally athletic. I compare them to the really tall girl on the eighth grade basketball team. She's out there on the court by the post and her coach told her to just stick her hands straight in the air, but then by the start of the second quarter, the other team realizes that she's not actually very good at basketball. Lopers have long legs that they don't really know how to handle, so they bound and jump and haphazardly propel themselves forward, which eventually results in running.
Gliders
Gliders seem to run solely using the bottom half of their body. When you drive past a glider, the top half of her body is in a complete state of serenity, but then when you look to her legs, her whole motion still looks effortless, but she still glides past you as if she's running on a moving walkway. I'm pretty jealous of gliders.
Swingers/ Phoebes
For those of you who know my Phoebe reference - awesome. For those of you who don't, watch this.
Swingers - like myself - do this weird thing when they stride and swing the bottom half of their leg around to bring it back to the front of the stride. It's terribly inefficient and will probably lead to some sort of terrible injury in the long haul, so for the past couple years I have consciously tried to make my stride more efficient (i.e. cut out the leg swinging) but when I get tired or lost in a train of thought, I fall back into my old habits and start swingin'. It's also a really ugly way to run, and highlights my tendency to stand a little pigeon-toed.
Truckers
Truckers are in it to win it. He's nearing the end of his twelve mile run (which is totally NBD) and he always sprints the last mile. But even the eleven miles he ran before that were super hard-core. A trucker tends to run in super short shorts, in order to show off his bulging quads and IT bands, because he is so skinny that you can see his IT bands. The trucker is the love child between the glider and the chugger - a natural-born runner with a fiery intensity.
Trotters, Lopers, and Chuggers, Oh My, Indeed! The best thing about this is that you really can be whatever kind of runner you want to be. In my mind I'm a cross between a trotter and a glider who looks like Blake Lively running on the beach in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Google it if you don't have a visual in your mind. She looks good.
But the bottom line is be who you are and be that well. Take pride in your style and keep running! We're all just runners at the end of the day.
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