running with people

[sophinisba]

On Sunday I went running with a group for the first time, and I found it really challenging, even though these three people were very nice and did about the same slow pace and distance I'm used to doing on my own. I usually listen to music or a podfic and find that helps distract me from the difficulty, whereas on Sunday I either had to try to make conversation with strangers (difficult in its own right!) or just listen to my own huffing and puffing.

But more importantly I just found it stressful in a way I hadn't expected, and that added to the difficulty of the running. Like, I'm used to keeping myself going by saying, "Okay, one more minute," or "make it to the next half mile point, and then you can take a break if you need to," and usually I make it to that point and decide I don't need a break yet, and I renegotiate. But when I was with this group I was putting a ton of energy into thinking, "OMG, I'm gonna need to stop soon! How do I tell them that I can't keep up? How do I convince them to keep going?" I was sure that if I said I needed a break they would stop and walk with me until I was good to go, but I didn't want the guilt of having kept them from doing their best workout. Ahhh!

So I kept going but was kind of miserable for a lot of it, and I think that since I did complain a bit they went more slowly and not quite as far as they would have without me. I decided in the middle that I wouldn't try this again until I'd gotten a lot better at running. However, once we finished there was a really nice feeling of group accomplishment, and it was nice having brunch with them and talking about some other events in town, and...I ended up grinning and saying "See you next week!" instead of goodbye.

I saw in another post that a lot of people like running with a group for the extra motivation to keep going, but does anybody else have trouble with the extra motivation turning into anxiety? Any tips on getting over this? And how do you feel about taking a break because just one person needs it?

Comments

[gnomad]

I run sometimes with a friend and I find it hard even when you know each other. We don't quite run at the same pace and have figured out that trying to talk while running is weird and sporadic, so mostly we end up running in the vicinity of each other but not together. It works out pretty well because I get company on a workout, can still listen to music, and don't have to worry about keeping up or slowing down for someone else. We have a lot of practice doing the 'exercise near each other but not next to each other' thing with a lot of different sports (skiing and biking most notably), though, so maybe it takes a few tries to be comfortable with it.

[sophinisba]

This is an intriguing idea, especially since the part I liked most about Sunday was hanging out afterwards rather than the run itself. We actually had 8 people show up then but split into three different groups by pace, but everybody was saying it was nice that it worked out so that everybody had someone to run with. I wonder how hard it would be to convince them that I'm good running with my iPod and meeting up with them later. Probably easier than convincing them in the middle that they should go on without me!