Signs of Life

Signs of Life

For the better part of a year I’ve been convinced that I was the only runner in my town. I almost never see anone running around town, and if I do, it’s obvious from their stride, attire, or some other tell-tale sign that they are not a regular runner. When I go to races, I always look at the results print out and scroll down the hometown column looking for anyone else from my zip code. I have never seen anyone else from my town until this past Sunday. I found one other person from Ware. Then this morning, I came across two other runners on my course.

I was running up the big hill on Doane Rd when up ahead I spotted two people running. They stayed ahead of me for a while, but when they switched to walking up the hill, I quickly caught up. As I passed them, we exchanged our “Good mornings” and the gentleman said to me, “Awe, you’re making us look bad.” You know what, if you’re out here and running, you can’t look bad. I’m just happy to see ya.

If I see them again, I’ll stop and talk for a bit. I would be nice to run with some other people from time to time. I joined the Central Mass Stiders with that in mind, but their organized training runs take place an hour away and I’m usually working on those days anyway. I even thought about posting an ad on craigslist, looking for local runners, but wondered what type of people would respond. A few weeks ago, at a race, I met some people from another local running club, Empire One RC, and found out that they schedule weekly 5Ks about 30 minutes from my house. One of these weeks I’ll join them and hopefully meet up with some more people around me. One of my Twitter friends, Middalia, just posted a blog story about running with a Twitter friend for the first time, and it sounds like she had a good time.

Anyway, I’m finally excited to see some signs of life.