In awe

One benefit of associating with a running club is you get a chance to run with them. And it is a place of exchanging ideas and learning of new races.

I started out running by myself a few years ago. While there is the internet, but a lot that I read or find out usually a bit different from actual.

In the beginning I was looking for races to run in Virginia. While races are out there, you just need to find them. A lot local races were not reviewed and their event dates usually known only to the “insiders”. There were a lot of surprises.

So I haphazardly signed up for races. Some were within my expectation and some were a bit different. I liked all my races though. At the beginning I did not even know what I like. I searched for DC races, and somehow I totally missed DC Rock n Roll but found the Potomac River Marathon. They were vastly different from each other. One was 30,000-40,000 runners the other was about 100. I did not know much. I did signed up for both. I was glad I did not have a strong preferences otherwise I would have missed out. For example, when I signed up for the Potomac Marathon, what I was looking for at the time was a big atmosphere race that a Rock-n-Roll gives, which the Potomac Marathon was not. However, now a day, I prefer low key, backyard informal race more like the Potomac Marathon.

In one of the events I signed up I got connected to an informal meetup running group. I have been running with them ever since.

Those were the early days of trial and error of meeting people and doing races. I am still doing it for most part.

Why I am writing all these, is it is easier to do things with a group. I have been running more and more and now dabbling into the ultra and trail running. I want to meet similar people and train together with them.

Over the weekend, I got a sense of how that feel like. It was a community of ultra runners. The people there were training together for their ultras.

We don’t have groups like that here in my area. Maybe they do exist but I have not bumped into them yet.

The race director there formed their group of trail running because they don’t have one. That was a big inspiration for me. I am not going to form one myself though.

But the energy and inspiration I got from them was blood pumping. What I meant was like my friend – he ran all night at the camp while he was there! Even at 3 AM in the morning, he was still running. That was to me inspiration and motivation.

I am looking for a small group of 10-20 people like that… locally if possible. PA or WV is not too far away either, so I don’t mind a bit of travel to meet up to do runs.

Future plans: from the past weekend, I learned of a few races from their group and I want to run those, such as, Eastern States, Black Forest, Hyner Ridge! They called them their triple crown. They are hard races!

You need serious support group to do those races. It always has been my plan to connect with people and recruit them to be my pacers/support.