FINALaudioessay

More and more people are participating in marathons, and social media is a leading factor in this trend. Running alone is a solitary sport, but running with a group is more enjoyable and can lead to connections. The Healthy Celebrations Run Club was started to support people moving their bodies and making exercise fun. Running together motivates and makes the run go by faster. The group provides a supportive training program for beginner runners. The tradition of running together brings people together and creates bonds. It is a fun and social way to stay active and healthy. If someone tells you they want to run a marathon, you would look at them like they are crazy. And they are crazy. 26.2 miles of running? Ouch. No way someone would want to do that. How do you even train for that? Who would put themselves through that much pain? In recent years, more and more people have been signing up for and participating in marathons. A study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst cites social media as a leading factor in more people signing up. I have seen, from my experience at school, people hear that their friends are taking part in a race and say, yeah, I could train for that too. Running itself is a very solitary sport. People run to clear their heads and get exercise, but for many, it's just a person in the road. Running is the easiest sport to get into if you don't have other people to do sports with. All you need is yourself and an area to run, and you're already participating in the tradition of running. Running with a group, however, is where things get a bit more exciting. Running together can lead to people connecting as well as making running more enjoyable. Between the social and training benefits, running together is far superior to running alone. In a previous episode of this podcast, I touched on the tradition that my running group has, where every Friday we meet up after a small run and have a social get-together for people to connect. In this episode, we will dive into the actual running part of the club. My journey of training and running a marathon changed completely when I joined the Healthy Celebrations Run Club and began engaging in the tradition of running with other people on Monday and Wednesday. Pretty much every Sunday night and Tuesday night, we'll send out a text, post on our Instagram. A quick little reminder, whoever wants to come is welcome to come, but the four of us who kind of lead it. We'll always be there, and whoever wants to come, comes. We run different distance every time, try to go different places every time, and kind of just move our bodies how fun and enjoy it. That's Maya Rembrandt, originally from the Bay Area of San Francisco and now a junior here at UW-Madison. Maya is one of the founders of the Healthy Celebrations Run Club. You might ask, what is the Healthy Celebrations Run Club, and why is it called that? Well, I was right there with you, so I asked Maya where the name came from. So a group of girls started it in South Carolina at their school, and they started it just to support people moving their bodies, getting together, having fun, making exercise kind of a fun social thing rather than being like, I don't know, something you have to do. And we, me and a couple of my friends, started running together this year because we were all training for the same marathon, and we wanted to start a run club just that was chill, easy, and they reached out to us and they were like, oh, if you're looking to start one, you should start one at Wisconsin because we don't have one there. And they reached out to you? Yes, because, through Laura. Okay. But, yeah, so the only way we really relate to them is under the same name and same principles, I guess. Through our shared traditions, unique communication style, and shared beliefs, the members of this run club exemplify what it means to be a folk group. I did not join the group until a few meetings had passed, so I asked Maya about her first impression of the group and how the first meeting went. We got a lot more involvement than I thought we would, which, like, I was surprised by that and excited by that. So first meeting, we got a big turnout, and it was just, like, really exciting. Cool. High energy. It was good. When I was training, the running group kept me motivated and excited to run. Before joining the group, I had only run by myself, leaning into the solitary confinement of running. I had been training by myself and talking to my friend Will, who was also training for the marathon. We had been running separately and checking in to see how each other was doing. I always found it helpful to my motivation and commitment to running. I got excited when I heard that more of us would be running. Running alone had been extremely boring, and I wanted any excuse to run together with people. I came to the first session wondering what to expect. How fast would everybody be? How many miles would we be doing? I found it very informal and what I would describe as another subgroup of my folk group of students running marathons. We can push each other to go faster and reach points in training that we didn't think we had in us. Having a training buddy is an awesome motivator and something that I have found to push me even more than anything else. Maya also added that... I think it just, like, motivates you to give up. Like, obviously, your lung goes up, for me at least. If my lung goes up at 7, it's 20 degrees out. And I'm like, oh my god, I could easily sneeze it and go to bed. And I probably would do that if I didn't have a group waiting for me. I like that motivation. Also, I think, like, making it social and, like, talking during it makes the run just go by way faster. When I joined the Run Club and found more like-minded people, I could de-stress, talk about my day or week, and talk about problems I might be facing with my new friends. Being a part of the group has been one of the best parts of my semester. Just as Lynn S. McNeil discusses in her book, Folklore's Rule, a fun, quick, and useful introduction to the field of academic folklore studies. The culture that this Run group has made through our shared traditions, like running together two times a week, connects us to an informal group. There's no hierarchy and no rules that bind us together, but we choose to gather because of our love for getting active and being healthy. When I asked Maya about her favorite parts of our tradition, she had this to say. I think pretty much every single meeting, there's new people. And I feel like I've just met a lot of people through it that, like, are kind of outside my general circle of friends, which is really nice. Especially because I feel like I'm kind of in a group-like bubble, and it's kind of made me meet people of different grades, different walks of life. So that's nice. Being able to add more people to this tradition of sharing running stories while checking in on one another has been one of the most rewarding parts of this training. I think it's just like a nice, like, activity and, like, fun, like, I don't know, it's honestly, like, kind of like a bonding type thing when you're even, like, running a marathon. And it's just less stressful than, like, a stressful environment. Like, because you're all kind of working towards the same goals, doing the same thing together, like, running the same distance, running the same time. So I just feel like that's, like, the most special part of it, that you're, like, all kind of, like, doing it together. Additionally, in a study published by members of Lowbrow University, they speak to the characteristics of individuals joining beginner groups and the outcomes they achieve. They say that beginner runners groups provide supportive training programs to help people progress from walking to sustained running. Maya was able to give me some insight into this, as she even had people come up to her about her involvement in bringing people together and out of their solitary rungs. I feel like it's also just, like, everyone can do it. Like, there's such a broad level of runners in the group. Like, there's people that are running marathons and other people that haven't run since high school or haven't run ever. And so it's a nice, just, like, we all start together. Like, you can walk, you can turn around early. But it's kind of just, like, the message of just, like, moving your body, like, feeling good, meeting people. Like, a couple people come up to me when I've been, like, out. And they've just been, like, this is actually so cool that you're doing this. Also, people just say, like, I haven't run in a while, and this has motivated me to get back into it. I think people have been, like, excited about the friendship. I mean, even the four other girls that I started with, or three other girls that I started with, I feel like I wasn't as close with them before. And it's kind of just, like, created a little bond. And I think people have been really excited about that. That's the main message of the group and the tradition. The tradition of running together has brought together so many different people and showed us how to move and be healthy in a fun, social way. The tradition of running together also brings runners out of their solitary confines of the sport and into a communal, shared space and experience. This is an ever-evolving tradition and one that I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. Tune in next week to hear more about running on the Zipco Running Show, where we talk snazzy shoes, support systems, and all things super cool. Have a great week, everybody. ♪♪