With the Pack

I was not a high school or college athlete. Running came to me, or rather, I came to running, a little later in life. Because of this, I never thought of it as a team sport. 

I always ran alone, with very few exceptions. I would zone out and go—sometimes plodding, sometimes pushing. I would reflect on the past, whether that was the previous day or a more distant time, and I would map ahead the future, from what I’d eat after the run to what I wanted to be doing five months from that moment.

I ran, and then I met up with friends. I ran, and then had plans with my husband. I ran, and then I went to work. I ran, and then I saw people. 

And then, I moved 450 miles west, toward the mountains, in search of many things, including more scenic, steeper runs. 

I didn’t give much thought as to how I’d make new friends. I had my husband, my cats, and a small handful of acquaintances in the area. It was all down to chance that I saw a post on Reddit and learned that the brewery just down the road (exactly three quarters of a mile down the road) hosted a run club every Tuesday.

I went, because it was too close not to.

That first run was objectively terrible. It was six in the evening on a sunny, eighty-something degree day, I wasn’t acclimated to living thousands of feet above sea level, the work of moving had left me little time to train over the past month, and I didn’t realize that I had started out with two of the fastest runners in the group. Though it was only a four-mile run around flat, paved neighborhood trails, I quickly crashed and had to walk the last mile and half of the route back to the brewery. 

I felt a little embarrassed, but no one back at the brewery seemed to notice or care about how fast or not I’d run the route. (Many of them, I’d learn later, had come from running on proper trails, a different route entirely.)

I got my discounted beer and forced myself to drink it, even though, at that point, I was unaccustomed to drinking so soon after a run. On the brewery patio, as my sweat dried and the sun sank down, I met at least ten people, all of whom were friendly and welcoming. I could sense many of them had real friendships that ran deeper than a Tuesday night social engagement, and when I saw that, I wanted it.

So I came back the following Tuesday.

I learned that many of the Tuesday attendees had a Thursday night run club, too. Oh, and some of them went to one on Mondays, and others were starting a new one, also on Mondays, and did I ever want to get out for a trail run on the weekend, or track during the week? 

I went, I went, I went. 

I ran in the cold and dark, bundled up and carefully stepping to avoid slipping on ice. I ran in the blazing heat, stripped down to just my sports bra, cursing the bright Colorado sun. None of this was unusual for me, except that I wasn’t alone, nodding to the runners passing by in the other direction; I was part of a pack. 

Sometimes the pack was only four or five people, all running disparate paces but sticking together all the same. Sometimes there were close to thirty of us, spread out along the route in respective pace groups. I usually found myself in the middle-of-the-pack group, where we ran anywhere between 8:30 and 10-minute miles, depending on how tired we were or what injuries we were battling. 

There were times I showed up excited to run, completely energized, ready to push myself in ways I wouldn’t if left to my own devices, and there were times when my only motivation was having a beer and some group therapy. Because while the initial draw was running, what keeps me going back every week is the pack itself. 

The pack includes, but is not limited to: 

The couple who hosted the local Nerd Nite, regulars who show up to multiple running groups.

Several post-docs hailing from various corners of the country (and in one case, the globe).

A fellow ex-Nebraskan who found their chosen family here, in this town, and even more specifically in this little corner of the running community.

The military man who has a reputation for running barefoot and bringing a can of Guinness to the trail as his preferred means of hydration. 

The forester who lived all around the country looking for a post-divorce move before ultimately settling here.

A therapist-turned-project manager who knows how to strike up a meaningful conversation with anyone. 

Different ages, occupations, family structures, states of origin, and, of course, running paces, all create a mosaic of humanity. While some people show up with a friend from school, a partner, or a family member, for the most part we are a ragtag bunch, folks who only know anyone else because we’ve been coming week after week to run together. After someone shows up several times, even if I don’t know much about them, even if I’ll never hang out with them in another context, I develop a fondness for them. My animal brain sees them and thinks: One of us. 

When I went to run club that first night, just two weeks after we moved, I didn’t entirely know what to expect. Something new, as I wasn’t used to running with people. A deal on my post-run beer, sure, that had been advertised. 

I wasn’t expecting to make friends. Everyone always said how hard it was to make friends in your 30s, or in a new town. 

But now, I say that if you seek something—even if that something is just novelty, or cheap beer—you will find something, even if it’s not what you were looking for. If you’re open to it, you might even get lucky enough to find more than you could have ever imagined. 

Me, I found my pack.