The Blob

As I briefly mentioned on Monday, I created my own running group. Last year I joined the Arlington Road Runners Group and actually ran with them for a while. But after a few setbacks I ended up never going back to it. One of the reasons was that I never met anyone there. Not one single person.

The whole time, I'd run by myself, with my ipod and nike+ on. After the run, I'd stick around at the key drop off spot, and people would grab their keys and leave. No one chatting, no one trying to get to know each other. So I had no motivation to be there at 9am on a freezing Saturday morning if my absence would not be noticed.

So needless to say, I started slacking off. Then it was hard to get back on track. Specially since I started biking to work, I had one more reason not to run. Who has the time (or energy) to go off for a run when you already biked 22 miles today? And you have a volleyball game to get to?

After coming back from my trip to Europe (hmmm, I still have not blogged about that...), I decided to get back on track. The impending Marine Corps 10K was one of the big motivators, of course. A friend of mine started running with me a couple of times a week, but her boxing and grad school schedule got on the way.

There are other running groups out there but when you read that the average pace is an 8 minute/mile, and you are a turtle at a 12 minute/mile pace, it doesn't really make you that excited to come out...

So, in a very selffish move to find others to run with me, I created my own running group. For the slow(er) folks. I would provide the link here, but you know, privacy reasons and all I won't (however, if you are interested -- we run at 10am on Saturdays in Arlington -- let me know).

The first event was a happy hour. We got about 25 people out there! The people? All freaking great. Really. A dozen people came out to the first run, and every run since we get about a dozen people out. The last happy hour was also a huge success.

I've met some incredible people that now know me, and are counting on me for routes every week. There's no way I can miss a run!

I do have "organizer" tendencies (or maybe "telling people what to do" aspirations), so organizing this group fits me well... Plus, I'm getting to know different routes and actually looking forward to our runs.

Now hopefully this will keep me in a running schedule and not let me slack off again. Even after the days are no longer short and I start biking to work again...

Today, I saw my pictures from the Jingle All the Way 10k. I look like Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I better start running more often...