Club Joggler in the St. Louis Track Club Half Marathon
Here’s a nice long joggling article about Joe Welling, a St. Louis area juggler who intends on club joggling a 
half marathon. This joggling sport is just sweeping the nation isn’t it?
It seems Welling has been a joggler for some time beginning somewhere during the mid- 1980s. Interestingly, he says one of the biggest challenges of club joggling is his hands go numb. Anyone who’s done club juggling knows what he’s talking about. He also says that sweaty hands is what causes most of his drops (which aren’t many).
We’ll try to get a joggler interview with Joe and update you on his performance if we can.
This Post Has 2 Comments
Hi! I’m Joe the Juggler (a.k.a. Joe Welling) the subject of this story.
I did all right for my first half marathon with juggling. When I was younger I joggled much longer distance than that (and a lot faster), but that was many years ago–and I never did these organized events like this one.
Despite trouble with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, I was able to juggle non-stop for the event. I had a total of 3 drops. I didn’t even stop for water. I did the first 10 miles in under a 10 minute/mile pace, but faded drastically at the end. The last 2 miles were a series of heartbreaking hills. (And the dern spectators kept saying that the finish line was just over the next hill, even though it wasn’t!) I finished in something over 10 minutes per mile. (I want to say my time was something like 2 hrs 11 minutes, but for some reason the race results page isn’t working at the moment.
http://www.stlouistrackclub.com/results.htm (Nov. 2nd half marathon)
Anyway, it was a blast. As always, there can be hundreds or thousands of other runners around, but the one who gets cheered on is the juggler!
I’m going to do the Go St. Louis half marathon this coming Sunday. I expect I’ll be a LOT slower since I haven’t been running much at all over the winter. I’ve also had a couple of ill-timed injuries. I may or may not be profiled on a local PBS program about the race. (It’s a huge race–over 10,000 entrants.)
Oh yeah–on the CTS pain and numbness: it matters a lot whether I wear a CT splint to sleep the night before a run. I’ve also discovered that while it gets steadily worse over about the first 5 miles of a run, after that it levels out. I think knowing that makes it much easier to handle mentally.