For the first three years I ran, I would have told you, with total confidence, that long runs were something you did alone. I liked the idea of it, the solitary figure putting in the miles with nobody watching, nobody to slow down for or speed up for. When a coworker mentioned there was a running club that met on Sunday mornings for a group long run, I remember shrugging it off. That sounded like the opposite of what I wanted. I was wrong about that, and it took me embarrassingly long to admit it.
What solo long runs actually gave me
I’m not going to pretend solo long runs were bad, because they weren’t. There’s something genuinely good about a long run where the only decisions are yours, where you can change the route on a whim or stop at a bench for five minutes if you want to and nobody’s waiting on you. I did most of my early long runs that way and I don’t regret it. I got comfortable with my own thoughts over two hours of running, which turned out to be a skill I still use even now that I run with other people most weekends.
Where solo running started wearing on me
What I didn’t expect was how much the solitude would start to feel like a weight instead of a freedom, somewhere in my third or fourth year. The long run became the thing I dreaded on the calendar, not because of the distance, but because I knew I’d be spending two plus hours completely in my own head with nobody to talk to. Some weeks that was fine. Other weeks it made the whole run feel longer than it actually was, mentally exhausting in a way the miles alone didn’t explain. I didn’t put this together for a while. I just assumed I was losing enthusiasm for running in general, when really it was the isolation of that one specific run that was wearing on me.
The first Sunday with the club
I finally went to a Sunday group run mostly because a clubmate I’d met at a local race kept mentioning it, and I ran out of polite ways to say no. I showed up expecting to feel awkward, and I did, for about the first fifteen minutes. Then somebody asked how my week had been and I found myself actually answering, and the next thing I knew we were four miles in and I hadn’t thought once about how far we had left to go. That was the part that surprised me most. The distance stopped being the thing I was managing in my head, because there was a conversation happening instead.
What I got wrong about group running
My assumption going in was that running with a group would mean compromising on everything, pace, route, how hard the effort felt, and that the compromise would outweigh the benefit. In practice, the compromise turned out to be smaller than I feared and the benefit turned out to be bigger. Yes, I sometimes run a little faster or slower than I would have chosen on my own. But I’ve come to think the version of me that insisted on total control over every long run was protecting something that wasn’t actually serving me, a kind of independence that had curdled into isolation without my noticing.
What I still get from running alone
I haven’t given up solo long runs entirely, and I don’t think I ever will. There are still weekends I need that, especially when something’s on my mind that I want to sit with rather than talk through. The difference now is that it’s a choice I make deliberately, rather than a default I fell into because I’d decided, without much evidence, that it was the superior way to run long. Some weeks I want the club. Some weeks I want the quiet. Knowing I actually have both options, and that neither one is the “correct” way to do a long run, has made the whole thing feel less like a discipline and more like something I actually look forward to.
What changed my mind, looking back
If I’m honest, what changed my mind wasn’t a single realization. It was several years of noticing that my dread on Saturday nights, thinking about Sunday’s long run, went away almost entirely once the club became a regular part of it. I’d spent a long time assuming that dread was just part of long distance running, something you push through because that’s what serious runners do. It wasn’t. It was a symptom of doing the long run in a way that didn’t actually fit me anymore, even though it had fit me fine when I started. Nine years in, I’ve learned that what a long run needs to feel sustainable can change, and being stubborn about how you’ve always done it isn’t the same thing as being disciplined.
What the group actually costs me
I don’t want to make the club sound like a fix with no downsides, because it isn’t. There are mornings the group pace doesn’t match what I actually need that day, and I’ve learned to speak up about splitting off rather than grinding through a pace that isn’t right for me, which took longer to feel comfortable doing than I’d like to admit. There’s also less flexibility in the route and the timing, since the run happens when and where the group has decided, not when it’s convenient for my week. Those trade offs are real, and some weeks they annoy me.
How I decide which one I need
These days I try to notice, sometime around Thursday or Friday, what the coming weekend actually calls for. If the week has been heavy with people and conversation, I lean toward running alone. If it’s been isolating in some way, or if I just want the company, I show up for the club. I got this wrong plenty of times early on, defaulting to whichever option was more convenient rather than actually checking in with what I needed, and I could usually tell by mile six that I’d guessed wrong.