Back in Dec, a friend from work, Julia, casually told me she wanted to start running. Before she could change her mind, I immediately offered to run with her. I also suggested inviting others to join us. This got her excited and, before we knew it, we were planning a formal running group!

To be honest, I had been thinking about doing this for some time but never took any action until Julia gave me the nudge to actually make it happen. I had it all in my head. I would map out a 2km loop so people could do as many loops as they wanted. The group would meet once a week for ~30 minutes. I even had a name for the group, 47RunRun, because our address is 4711 Yonge St.

We decided to start the group in January to capitalize on all the people who were making new years resolutions. Then I chose a goal race for the group which will be the Spring Run-Off 5k or 8k in April. We announced it in our weekly employee email and asked people to contact us if they were interested. To our surprise, people started to email us almost right away! We added a recurring invite into people’s calendars to block off their time. We even asked Filomena (our fitness center manager) to do a Running 101 for those who are beginner runners.

The first week, 11 runners came out! I was so impressed especially since it was -8C that day!

This week, three of them ran on Wednesday and 6 of us ran on Thursday. Corinne (who ran the Toronto Women’s 10k last year while on mat leave and cheered for me during my half) wanted to do 3 loops this week so I did a 3rd loop with her.

Even just after 2 weeks, many of them have now told me that they love running with people, something that most of them had never done before. I hope they will all catch the running bug and become run addicts! 😂 Can’t wait to see them cross the finish line at the Spring Run-Off!