I think it takes time to build a good run club.
When the pandemic hit a few years ago, it was everything we could do to hang onto the little collection of people we had accumulated in the years leading up. We had Zoom calls, we met in a big parking lot where we could social distance, and we pushed to maintain connection through the adversity and advice of society.
Many clubs didn’t. Our club was an offshoot of a club that had gelled inside the local running store from people doing drop in runs and taking clinics. We brought it out into the parking lot and coffee shop, but when the pandemic shut everything down that little kernel of a club popped and disappeared.
It took nearly three years before they even tried to restart it.
And six years later it is just starting to feel like the old days. I was running with the rekindled club just the other night, a dozen of us who are no longer just a bunch of strangers dropping in on a weekday evening for a quick tour of the neighbourhood. It had that feeling where you come early to chat and then stay after, too, again to chat, getting into each other’s lives and listening to work stories and vacation tales and training struggles.
It took us almost three years to get that back.
Definitions
- advice
- This is NOT an advice site. I write for entertainment only. Please see my note on advice in my page called "Some Notes" in the menu at the top of each page.
- august
- In the month of August where I live summer peaks and the days are often relatively hot (in the high 20s or low 30s) muggy, smokey and dry. Rain is infrequent, but when it arrives it comes in the form of drenching downpours and epic thunderstorms. We begin our runs earlier in the day because the local marathon runs late in the month and our training distances are maxing.
- october
- Fully into autumn, October is a month of shifting seasons, short days, long shadows, and gorgeous sunsets. The cobwebs are hung on the eaves in preparation for halloween, and here in Canada we're running off Thanksgiving dinner for a couple weeks after a proper good meal mid-month.
- pandemic
- It seems silly to define a worldwide event that affected literally everyone on the planet, but years have passed since those months in 2020 and beyond when COVID-19 shut down society and forced us to change our habits and routines.
- run club
- Picture it. A group of strangers meet in a quiet parking lot on a cool morning and, dressed in shorts and neon t-shirts, set off into the unknown while sweating and breathing heavily together. Adventures ensue. Conversations flow. Friendships form.
- september
- The days are noticeably shorter when we realize that September is upon us. The post-summer routine kicks in and people are back to regular work schedules and kids are back in school. It can still be warm, but the hottest days are behind us and most of the biggest races of the year are in the rear view. We savour September knowing winter is too soon to come.
