Hey be filled up readers! Hope you are having a great week and I’m sure, “Everybody’s working for the weekend!” Last weekend, I decided to meet up with a running group to hit the trails over by The Red Covered Bridge. I started receiving emails from A Running Start, an awesome running store in West Reading, about Saturday morning group runs. The runners do anywhere from 4 to 12 miles at many different paces, 8 to 12 minute miles. I fall into that range, running a 9 minute mile comfortably and figured I would give it a shot. I woke up bright and early on Saturday – 6 ish, had my coffee and shortly after set out to meet the group. Now, I never really met anyone in the running group and to be honest, was a bit nervous. I pulled up to the parking lot a few minutes early and hung out until I saw the owner of A Running Start pull up. I jumped out of my car and started chatting it up with her and slowly two more gals joined the group. There was already a group out running who started at 7 am and they were doing a long run. The group I met with at 7:30 am was going to do a shorter run. I really had no idea how many miles I wanted to do but figured I would decide once I saw how I felt with the heat and humidity.
Once we got started, I chatted for a while with the owner of ARS and once she turned around and headed back to the parking lot, I chatted with another girl in the group. She and I magically started talking about things in life and realize we have a couple of connections! It is quite small world. We both kept at the same pace and the miles just flew by. Total we did about 6 and a half miles in about an hour. I felt awesome after the run and not only that felt great knowing I met some new running buddies.
Great things I learned about running groups:
- You meet new running friends – Yay!
- You push yourself harder when running with others
- You are more motivated to run longer distances especially if the group is doing so
- You can chat with the other runners, which makes the distance fly by
- You can network with others outside of your normal social realm
Are you involved in a running group, or do you stick to your same running buddies? Do you have a running store near you that sets up group runs? Or do you enjoy running alone?
