Baby-Jogging Runners Only Had Kids “To Be Twats”

Ever thought that the guy sailing past you in your parkrun pushing their kids in a buggy is just doing it to annoy you? Well, more than likely you’d be right.

Toddlejoggle, a manufacturer of high-end running pushchairs, asked 700 people what motivated them to take their kids out running. The answers were surprising.

Only 12% said to enjoy sport with their kids and inspire them. More than half of the respondents said they just wanted to annoy other runners. 24% hate their kids.

Dave Smith, a runner from Rochester, said “It’s brilliant. The design of these things means you only go about one minute slower than in a parkrun, but the kudos you get for running alongside others trying to get a PB is amazing. I say kudos, I know they are secretly seething, which I like.

“I will sometime give some sort of faux-humble retort to any comment that says I am amazing, like saying ‘Ooooh, it gets harder every week as they get heavier’, but I just seem to feel immense satisfaction beating people who I would comfortably beat anyway if I wasn’t pushing little Gertrudia and her fluffy wombat”.

Ely resident Tabitha Hayles is one of a growing number of people getting annoyed. “It’s not enough that you are running balls-out up a hill,” she says, “and someone cruises past you pushing their little darling, but then they have to make insincere comments like ‘I’m surprised I can even get this one up a hill after all those lentil burgers he ate yesterday’.

“So not only is she lauding the fact she’s faster than me, but she’s passing judgement on my choice to leave my kids in a cage at home and occasionally throw them some chicken nuggets. I’m sure some of them just run fast to stop others noticing how ugly their sprogs are”.

Unable to stop her tirade, Hayles continued to fume “Twin parents are the worst, the calculating shits. It’s not enough that they created their kids in a lab, but they then go and push their little Frankensteins around the park with reckless disregard for how insecure I feel about not being arsed to train better”.

Tommy Wiley, a young man from Chester, has felt the pain more than others though. He was one such child, a bundle of ploy, born to let a grown-up brag at races. He recalls the misery of being taken out of school to be strapped down into a chair and then run ragged around tight corners and over speed bumps in training.

“I’d like to think I’m OK for it, but I do still get the migraines. I remember once I spewed in a race so from then on I was banned from having breakfast. Luckily it ended when I got a little sister and she was a premmie, so that was perfect for them. I don’t see much of my Dad anymore, I feel like I’ve let him down. It would be nice if he could at least be in the same room as me on my seventh birthday next week”.