Loving Run Club

Simplifying goals can lead to sustainable habits.

A handful of years ago, when my son was first born, I decided to get healthier. At the time, work had me sitting at the computer all day, every day. I was eating poorly and not exercising routinely. Exercise had been difficult for me in my adult life because so much of the exercise I got when I was younger happened organically. I was highly active, but it was never the result of solo exercise. It was playing with my friends in the neighborhood or through the slew of organized sports I participated in. I was always doing something. That abruptly changed when I went to college, and at the snap of a finger, organized sports essentially stopped. Throw in alcohol and a normalizing metabolism, and the results weren’t great.

When I decided to get healthier, it was clear that it was not something I could do on my own. I had bad habits. Just choosing one day, “Oh, I am going to exercise regularly,” would not be sustainable. Not only did past failures to get myself into shape play into this, but knowledge from reading the books “Peak Performance” and “Atomic Habits” helped to crystallize it. I’ve written about how James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, has helped me before.

So, I joined a run club. And I love it. Based on the above books, I knew signing up for run club would help in a few ways - establishing a routine, joining a community, and providing accountability were all motivations for me to do so. All of those contributed to me getting back into running and sticking with it.

However, none of those represent the main reason I love run club so much, and I will do my best to articulate that main reason. There’s a concept in habit development where you break a goal down into something small and manageable to the point it’s almost ridiculous. For example, if you want to start working out at the gym, don’t make the goal to “work out for 45 minutes”. Instead, make the goal as simple as physically getting to the gym, with no expectation beyond that. It’s simple, easy, and not intimidating. Maybe initially, you’ll only work out for a few minutes. But over time, you establish the habit of going to the gym, and as you get more comfortable with how to work out, you’ll stay longer and do more. It becomes sustainable.

I was somewhat skeptical of this concept when I read about it, but run club has shown me how reshaping what your goal is or how you go about achieving it can completely transform your likelihood of following through. My experience with run club is not a 1 to 1 example of the gym goal anecdote, but it has removed the friction of running in so many ways.

When I try to run from home or on my own, it’s difficult for various reasons. I have no set time to start, so that’s one decision I need to make. This often leads to scenarios where I tell myself, “I can do it later,” and my motivation is sapped later. That leads to “I can do it tomorrow.”

When I do get started, there’s more friction and more decisions to be made. Do I spend time on a quality warm-up? What route should I run? Can I stop early?

When I go to run club, though, all that is taken care of for me. It’s at a set time. We always have an organized, quality warmup. The routes are planned. The accountability of the group and community aspect never has me considering stopping early (unless I’m working through an injury).

For me, the goal on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings has shifted. It’s not “Run X miles at Y pace.” It’s, “Get in the car to go to run club.” Because everything that follows from there has become an inevitability. No matter how challenging or long the scheduled workout is for that day, I know once I get into the car to go to run club, the run, in some ways, is already run.

This post doesn’t have a specific point. I wanted to share why run club has been so successful for me and encourage people to “hack” their own goals by simplifying, being creative, and leaning on structure and/or community to make things easier.