Having friends as an adult is more weird than you think.  If you have a group of people who you hang out with and those people are not (a) your spouse and their friends (b) your workmates or (c) people you “know” online, then guess what: you are weird.

Not weird in a bad way. Weird, as in not average. Weird as in exceptional. Weird as in you don’t statistically fit into twenty-twenty-six first world society. Good weird.

I’ve read in numerous places that there is a friendship collapse in the modern western world, particularly among men. At least here, in the middle of nowhere Canada, ask a guy who his best (and often) only friend is, and he’ll mention his spouse or a sibling.  People don’t have as many friends anymore.

Meeting up for two hour long post-run coffees with people not out of obligation, but because the coffee-part is the highlight of the meetup, as in “we could just skip the run and go for coffee” (which we all joke about but have only actually done once… and the weather was fekking icepops) that is weird.

Adults, sadly, don’t have a lot of friends. Adult men have statistically, basically, no friends.

My running club has filled that gap in my life, and here’s the sentimental part, I don’t know what I’d do if it went away. I don’t know how I’d find that kind of social group back.

If you have friends, count yourself lucky, and weird.

If not, might I suggest that you go for a run. 

Look, I get it. We all internalize our measures of self worth and personal achievement. We make standards. We lay down goals. We invent rules for how we expect ourselves to perform. 

But when those creep outside our own heads and become adjudications upon the participation of others? That’s my pet peeve. 

The stories we bring to this sport are individual and complex. Everyone comes with a unique backstory and often that backstory is filled with adversity and challenges, obstacles that have needed to be overcome for them to be standing there in a pair of trainers and getting ready to even just try running.

I’ve been online too much lately, I admit. But the vibe on social media while it can often be fun and positive, has a dark side of both overt and covert gatekeeping: setting rules and expectations about who is worthy to be on the trails, how participation should measure up, and what “counts” in the sport.

But let’s be clear. All of this is just made up. Everything. It’s fuzzy and pretend and it’s this thing we do and then play like there are immutable orders writ in blood and stone about how things are to be done.  But really? We’re all just making this up… and it’s supposed to be recreation, participatory, open, and for anyone and everyone.

If you’re online or in person and you meet another runner it’s not your job to check credentials and bounce the gate. It’s your job to build the community and hold the door open for those coming up behind.

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.