Chances are, if you’ve seen Jeremy Fischer, you remember him. He is Jamaica Plain’s resident ‘joggler’—someone who juggles while jogging.
Fischer told the Gazette he has been doing it for years.
“The first race [that] I joggled was a 5K in Somerville, and I definitely dropped the balls more than a few times,” he said. “As I was finishing I heard someone say, ‘Another juggler.’ I have no clue if there really was another joggler in that race or if someone was messing with me, but I remember thinking that I didn’t even win the joggling division!” he said.
A long-time runner and juggler, Fischer finally thought of joining the two after reading a feature about jogglers in the Boston Marathon in 2006, though he didn’t actually try it for a few years.
“It’s really fun and I enjoy things that are absurd. It’s definitely fair to say that joggling is absurd,” Fischer said. “Also, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the attention it gets. It’s really fun to laugh along with other people even if we don’t know each other.”
“My favorite is when people say, ‘I can’t even do that standing still,’ because I then get to respond with, ‘Me neither,’” he said.
Fischer had been running trails a long time when a combination of living in the city, parenting two small kids and an injury made him slow down.
“Joggling was a great excuse for slowing down and not feeling too bad about it,” he said. “It’s actually a great workout. Putting running and juggling together kind of doubles the workout, which is a nice little benefit.”
Fischer said that a key to successful joggling is ball control.
“It’s actually super-important for joggling to juggle in a really controlled way. Lots of people end up chasing the balls and moving their hands forward to catch the balls, but this makes it hard to [joggle],” he said.
Fischer said he now juggles during every race he runs. The longest he’s completed while juggling was last year’s Boston Half Marathon.
“That was pretty hard by the end but it was fun. I’ve also done the Doyle’s [Café] 5-miler a bunch of times, and that is a really fun one,” he said.
Fischer also was on the winning team of this year’s “Sedgwick SLOG,” a neighborhood relay race around Jamaica Pond.
Joggler Jeremy Fischer in action last week. (Photo Courtesy Mickey Rabina)