It has been a little while since I’ve felt the compulsion to write and wax poetic about running, but when I heard Todd R. announce that Emmett R. was looking for an article or a sentence about the Long Beach Marathon experience for the newsletter, I saw my chance.
I have the good fortune to work with a wonderful professional, Carrie C., who told me about this club, A Running Experience Club, in Long Beach, when I first moved to the area in June of this year. Remembering my experience eight years ago when I first moved from Canada to West L.A., I decided that joining a running club would be the best way to meet cool people while indulging in an exercise I actually like.
And so it happened: my fiancé, Johan and I joined AREC in June, and have been running on the Wednesdays and Saturdays, though not as consistently as we’d like, since then.
The result: not only have we met great people and gotten to know Carrie better outside of work, but we both ran great half’s at this year’s Long Beach Marathon!
Johan reached a personal best on that cool, yet initially sunny fall morning, while I came within 2 minutes of what I recall as being my personal best, which happened sometime in the late 90s in Long Beach. I was happy! We both took significant minutes off of last year’s Long Beach Half Marathon.
We attribute our success to us now living together and being able to train together regularly, and being able to run beautiful courses with such an excellent running club.
So in summary, my feeling is, while things in life change, I’m glad some things stay consistent: how important running is in my life, and how great running clubs can be for providing a sense of community and belonging.