• It is a thing •
[1½ MIN READ]
Talking at an SRC run is particularly rewarding because there’s a wide variety of folks to run with doing many different paces. The eponymous run goes up Shawmont Avenue for a conventional 14 miles. That means there are opportunities to have conversations with a variety of different people, particularly if you’re comfortable switching up your pacing.
Naturally, not everyone talks to everyone else—different strokes for different folks—but it’s consistently fun and enlightening for me because I’m both curious about everyone and comfortable striking up conversations to satisfy that curiosity.
Some Shawmont Avenue efforts are particularly distinctive when there are only a few runners doing the conventional. It means you can really get into some far-ranging conversations. That was the case when Rob Ray and I found ourselves the only 2 runners doing the titular route.
We talked together through politics and spirituality to adoption of our respective children and identity development relative to the trans-racial and ethnic elements of our families. There were forays into respective professions and international travel…and that’s what I actually remember.
I often get to share with non-running friends some of the great conversations I have with SRC rudder bunnies. They inevitably comment with shock, “You talk when you run?” And my response is inevitably the same, “If you can’t talk when you run, then you’re working way too hard.” Granted, speed work as hard work is incompatible with conversation, so during the 2½ hours of solid conversation we did break during the upper quarter of our Shawmont Avenue ascent: hill work is speed work, after all.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe) “Negative Split or Positive Splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text by Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-published: Facebook Shawmont Running Club (ZY Weekly Newsletter 1/25/25), Shawmont Running Club website, Ruminations by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Rumination only with added caption.
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