This is a guest post by Teri Saylor, a Raleigh-based freelance writer and blogger who writes the local Miss Congeniality blog. Visit her at http://misscongeniality.wordpress.com or terisaylor@hotmail.com
If you have spent a Saturday morning at Panera, you may have noticed a bunch of sweaty ragtag vagabonds, some walking sort of funny, rearranging the furniture and taking over the place.
Believe it or not, we are marathon runners, although on some days, the way we are limping and gimping about, you would think we could not even run a 100-yard dash.
We are part of the Galloway Marathon Training Group, whose official running season begins in early May and runs through mid-December. We usually start our runs at Shelley Lake, from the park’s Millbrook Road entrance. Sometimes we run through the Greenway, emerging onto Six-Forks Road, running all the way past North Hills, and down Lassiter Mill Road. From there, we enter the Country Club Hills neighborhood, get back on the Greenway, and work our way back to Shelley, for a good 10-mile loop.
Sometimes we run the Greenway out past Crabtree to the end and back, which is also a 10-mile loop. This route is becoming more popular as our numbers have grown over the years. It’s scary to jog in large packs along Six Forks Road, even at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday mornings, and even though we stick strictly to the sidewalks.
Last summer, we swelled to more than 300 runners. Never fear, we won’t inflict that kind of volume on Panera, but we do like to joke that the popular coffee shop expanded its space a couple of years ago to accommodate us.
Most of the group trains for fall marathons, and by mid-August, and the half-way point of our season, we have trained our way up to 14, 16, or even 18 miles. Coffee, juice, soft drinks and bagels make a mighty fine reward for us when we show up at Panera, bedraggled and weak after those long runs in the dog days of summer.
If you have ever trained for your first marathon, and you plan to keep running, you never want to go through the “start from scratch” place again. We have a pretty strong contingent of winter runners, keeping a distance base of 10 miles, and giving ourselves a head start on the new season.
So if you show up at Panera around 9 or 10 a.m. and see a large group of tired people of all ages hanging out together, you won’t need to wonder “what’s up with that?” Pull up a chair and join us. Better yet join our running group and train for a marathon.
It’s fun. Really.
Visit http://www.runinjuryfree.com/training_groups/raleigh.html
2 Responses to “What’s Up With All Those Sweaty People at Panera?”
By Jennifer on Mar 4, 2008 | Reply
Haha wow, I had actually been wonderin about the hordes of exercise people on Saturdays there. Makes my head spin to imaging running that far though.
By Jacob on Mar 6, 2008 | Reply
Wow, I had no idea there were that many runners in this group. Nice write-up!