By Citius Mag Staff
May 27, 2026
There are a lot of new runners who have recently joined our great community thanks to mid-life crises or a desire to meet other singles in their neighborhood. As lifelong runners who toiled in the trenches (got made fun of for wearing running shorts as high schoolers in the early 2000s), we hold no resentment towards our new hybrid athlete brethren and sistren with much better bench press and squat PBs. If anything we welcome you! Perhaps a handful of you will cross the Rubicon from “frequent run club attendee” to “obsessive dork who contributes to the stellar open-rate of a weekly track and field newsletter.”
With that said, there are a few obvious signs that someone may not have gone through puberty as a member of the cross country team, aside from innocuous ones like being good at frisbee. The most glaring tell is a lack of basic bathroom etiquette on group runs. And because we aren’t gatekeepers and are genuinely glad you are here, here are 14 unanimously understood rules by lifelong runners about going to the bathroom on the run:
1. When someone has to pee you wait for them.
2. You can’t stop to pee in a group before three miles.
3. Pee breaks are at the top of hills, not the bottom.
4. If you break rules 2 or 3 that’s fine, but you forfeit rule 1.
5. Hold your pee until those coming the opposite way on the trail pass.
6. If someone needs to poop and they don’t have paper, then whoever does have some is expected to share.
7. It’s not littering if it’s a poop covered biodegradable sock.
8. If someone who needs to poop requires a physical bathroom then the route will change to include one.
9. If a poop is going to take more than two minutes then the pooper should encourage the group to do an out and back.
10. Fart in the back of the pack.
11. No poops at the Sedona track.
12. In the last 10 minutes before a marathon there are no rules, or laws, for that matter
13. You can’t stop your watch mid-race to use the bathroom and then pretend that’s your actual time or say things like, “if I didn’t stop to use the bathroom, then I would have…”
14. The decision to poop your pants mid-race is a personal one and shall not be judged, but you better be running a massive personal best if you go through with it.
14 rules? Phew! We know that’s a lot, and we don’t expect you to commit them all to memory right away. If you mess up in a pee way, not a poop way, that’s okay. You merely adopted the dark hobby… we were born socially stunted through our obsessive participation in it.
Citius Mag Staff
