• Serendipitous and deliberate •
[1½ MIN READ]
Since travel during race-training season often overlaps with customary training runs, one must make allowances. For me, making them gives me an opportunity to make friends in new spaces. Take Wife’s professional meetings, for instance. I’ll have her put out an announcement about a morning group run and I’ll lead it. Being her plus-one at a couple of professional meetings allowed me to meet an association colleague from Kentucky 2 different times. Given that Colleague was also an equestrian who did research on mental health and horses made for 2 fascinating conversations separated by a mere 12 months.
In my new volunteer role for Arcadia University’s Arcadia Christian Fellowship, I’ve been able to transfer that practice to a new setting. One CCO combined weekend retreat with a few other Pennsylvania universities gave me the opportunity to host 2 runs on Saturday and Sunday mornings, respectively. The first had me running with 2 completely new students. The second had me running with one of the same Saturday students and 2 from AU.
There was no reason to believe that Wife’s events would have me meeting the same person 2 different years, so that was rewarding. There’s more reason to believe that I’ll meet some, if not all, of the same students again. Even if I don’t, though, it’s still rewarding to talk about common interests like running and whatever else circumstances and conversation might elicit.
In the case of the 2 students from Arcadia, the overlap will just continue, naturally. Transfer that to weekly runs at JRC’s GGR and the relationships just continue and deepen. Rewarding without needing to wait 12 months.
-CtCloser (Calvinthe), “Negative split or positive splat” #dothedue
FINE PRINT ¶Text and photos (unless otherwise stated): Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ¶Cross-posted: (1) Facebook JRC Growlers Group Run (2025’10’01’W Run Message), (2) GGR email list, (3) Cerebruns by CtCloser. ¶This website posting: Cerebrun with added caption.
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