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Friday, 08 April 2011 10:13

Written by Leslie Rubinkowski

36 Days to Marathon

Yesterday: Off

Today:  45 minutes yoga

The first time I ran with a group, it was an accident.  One below-freezing Saturday in January I jittered down Fifth Avenue toward Shadyside and all of a sudden found myself surrounded – a pack of runners descended Wilkins Avenue and flowed around me.

“Welcome to our running group,” a woman said.  We laughed, hung for a couple of blocks and parted ways at Aiken Avenue.  I slowed as they headed south and watched as their backs grew smaller, and I suddenly felt like what I was, a runner alone.

I’m not complaining – some of my happiest moments in the last year came as I’ve suffered transcendently all by myself.  I listen to my body, ignore my brain’s misery buzz, wonder did that Dirtbombs guy just say ‘shlemiel’? *  And at times I’ve wondered this, too: what’s life like when you run with a pack?

On a Saturday a few weeks ago, I decided to find out.  I joined a group of runners raising money for Gilda’s Club Western Pennsylvania by taking part in this year’s Pittsburgh Marathon.  This year the club, which provides free support for people with cancer and their family and friends, is on track to meet its goal of raising $40,000 by having donors support the runners running the full or half marathon.

“It’s the most fun event we’ve ever undertaken,” Carly Reed told me.  As the group’s development and outreach coordinator, she decided that as long as she was planning the weekly runs, she might as well train for the race, too.  “For me,” she said, “it’s just the people involved.”

Anywhere from 15 to 30 people gather at a weekly meeting place – it changes each week – to run one of several mapped courses at a number of different paces; after their runs they meet again for fruit and bagels and talk about training.

The week I ran with the group 23 of us left Urban Active Fitness in Bakery Square around 8:30 a.m., winding through Squirrel Hill, Oakland, the Hill, Downtown, the Strip, on and on.  Everybody in the group I ran with talked about anything – mile speeds, career philosophies, training programs, marriage proposals, the advantages of gels versus energy blocks, weekend plans, the calculus of intestinal funk.  My group ran together for about 10 miles.  One by one, people peeled off to log their long-run distances.  My last partner was in Highland Park -- Katie, a seven-marathon veteran.

“Seven.  I’m jealous,” I told her.

“Just keep going,” she said.  “You’ll get there.”

Then, from about mile 12 on, I was on my own.

But not completely.  As I jogged out of Highland Park I passed three runners, two men and a woman, who looked familiar.  Then it hit: we recognized each other from the gym early that morning.   We stopped, chatted a moment in the rain.  I showed them my map of the 16-mile course.  We compared distances.  I turned to head right out of the park toward Garfield; they set off to run around the reservoir.

“Enjoy,” I said.

“You too,” one of men replied, and we turned and left each other.  I was alone again, but I was also thinking that just a few moments earlier I wasn’t.  And even for an avowed soloist, that meant something.

Reed knows the feeling.  “What I’ve found in my running,” she said, “is that if I have a running partner, I feel like those people who become my running partner also become my best friends.”  It’s the case whether she’s lived abroad or in Washington, D.C., where she went to grad school.  She recently went to the wedding of a friend she met in school – who, despite the demands of being a bride, booked time for a run the day before the ceremony.

After Reed finished her run that Saturday, she went back to Bakery Square to check in with the group.  Over bagels and fruit everyone hung around talking about how their runs went.  Experienced runners offered advice to the novices.  Some made plans for next time.

“It’s great,” Reed said, “just to see people at the beginning, and just to have somebody to wave to at the end.”

Tomorrow the group meets at 8 a.m., at Gilda’s Club at 2816 Smallman St. in the Strip District.

*Yes, he did.

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