I belong to a running group, who when I joined them in 2017 claimed they had not missed a single Saturday run since they were founded in 2014.
And I believed them, because I showed up on some crazy Saturdays (like -4 degrees and snowing, or during a hurricane) and there was at least one other person as crazy as me, in order to keep the streak alive!
Now we may not have run our usual 5-8 miles, but we ran at least 2 miles, and kept the streak going.
Then Covid hit.
Our last group run was March 14, 2020. The streak was broken...kinda.
We continued to post pictures of us running individually on a Saturday morning, potentially keeping the streak alive, but it wasn't the same.
Last week, we came back together for the first time in over a year!
I had forgotten how much fun it was to run in a large group, chatting about families, about what we are training for, where we are going after the run for coffee.
I had also forgotten how fast they are.
The one thing that running with these people reminded me was that when I run with them, I run faster...which is a good thing.
In the beginning, I just held on, and grunted my affirmations when they talked to me.
This week, I led the 10k group, and the goal was to go a little slower than normal, since a lot of us, are still getting back into the swing of things.
I led the conversations, which would never have happened in the past. And the pace was faster than when I first joined the group, but not so fast that we lost our runners.
It was great to be back with my running friends.
My training plan has me running longer than what the group has planned, but that's ok. I can run down to the meeting spot (2.75 miles, or a good half hour warm up), then I can run with them (5-8 miles, a good hour or more depending on the route), then I can run home (a good cool down).
It has really been a roller coaster of a year, but getting this group back together and running again has really made it feel like we have turned a corner.
And there is 4 weeks to the Patriot Half! But still no word on IM Mont Tremblant.
The training goes on.