Running Club - Again?

I have been to a few running clubs. I never stick for a long time, purely because I was never a tempo runner. I am more a Zatopek type runner. And clubs are too constricting for this type.

My first club was the Infy runners group. After work we would run around the Infy Blore campus. Some days we would run to work as well. I would just out pace everyone and get in my quick 5k and get out. There was hardly any socializing.

Then there was the Blore hash house harriers. This was all about socializing and I loved it. Even if you had raw pace, it didn’t matter, because the hares strategically set fake trails to slow the fast hounds. And if they didn’t that was their failure. It was all about socializing and I loved it.

In Shanghai I had two running clubs again, one was the Shanghai Hash house harriers. This was purely for fun. And then the other was the Monday nights Malones run. This was hardcore racing. In my time in Shanghai, I think I probably never missed any of the Monday night Malone’s run.

In Singapore I was part of the Choa Chu Kang running club. But this was a pretty slow club, with 1 or 2 good runners and mostly I was in it for the social aspect. Fun BBQs. Also Singapore was tiny and had so many races per year and you consistently end up bumping into runners from your locality.

After that in Korea I was part of courun. This to date was my faorite running club. It had hard core runners. It didn’t try to organize runs at same pace. It organized the time. The time was 45 minutes. You could run up 5k and back to start point if you were fast and you could run up 4k and back if you were average. Or you could run 2.5k up and back if you were ultra slow. And all distances had a few people and so it was super fun. Also all runs ended with socializing. I truly miss courun.

After 2020, I haven’t joined any running clubs, till last Saturday.

I joined Musinsa Run Crew. Unlike Courun, this is a very rigid club. It has ethos, rules, one pace for all, fixed routes and a ton of constrictions including how many times you can skip the runs etc. I am positive, I won’t last in this club for long.

It has some good runners, but I think the reason it will fail is you want people to want to run together by themselves. Rules shouldn’t be the motivating factor.

But for now it is one run event old. Hopefully, things will change in the future.