Making Running Friends

For the most part, I love running on my own. When I'm seriously training for something, I have specific paces and distances that I'm pushing myself to hit, and buddy runs just don't fit in to that equation. Also with as temperamental stomach as I usually have, it's hard to make running plans with someone and be able to stick to them when you don't know if your stomach is going to be on the same page.

When I was training for my first marathon, I found Jenn's profile on Dailymile. She was also training for a marathon, and our paces for almost every type of workout were spot on with mine. Of course I had to friend her, message her, and tell her we should be BFFs immediately. And then we were. Thanks to the magic of Dailymile. Unfortunately for me, she moved away 4 short months after we met.

Luckily for me, she introduced me to Megan, who's also a runner, so I was able to get an occasional running buddy since she doesn't live in the same town as me, but she's busy growing a baby right now, so we haven't been able to do many runs together for the last 8 months. Harumph.

For the last six months. I've been meeting up with a new runner friend Jenn who I met through some other local runners to get in our miles and our gab sessions. It's awesome. I seriously wish I could run with her every single day. But she's running paces like I used to run, so I feel like I'm slowing her down when we run together. She's training for her first marathon this summer, so I've promised her I'll be back to normal speed by June so we can plan to spend some of our long runs together!

But I'm greedy. I want more. More running friends! After spending the last few months actually having company for a long run, I realize how much I miss it. I've often joked about making Runner Business Cards to hand out to people I see on the bike trail with my name and email and my general running paces to have them contact me so we can be running BFFs.

Maybe I should plan a speed dating meet up for runners. But like...running buddies instead of dating.

But seriously. How have you met your running buddies??? Is it super weird to just go up to people after races and demand they be your running buddy? I suck at putting myself out there, but maybe I need to just suck it up and do it!