4.54 miles down the West Side, then snacks and drinks.
That was the Reonomy run-club route. We would leave after work, head south to Battery Park, and finish near enough transit that anybody with a deadline could get back to the office around seven.
The route also worked for run commuters. People heading farther downtown could keep going toward home or catch a train in the Financial District. I wanted as many people as possible to have a version of the run that fit.
The night before, I sent the route around and asked who was ready. By the next evening, a good group had shown up and run it.
Then run club kept going.
We hung out afterward with food and drinks. That part was fun enough that it became part of the expectation for future runs. The duration was not. I told everybody I generally expected us to eat and have something to drink afterward, but I did not expect every run-club night to stretch as long as the first one did.
That was a good problem. Earlier in the summer, I had been pulling out of races while my leg and back refused to cooperate. Lake Placid was out, and training had become a cycle of trying, stopping, and rebuilding. An easy company run was a much better place to be than another starting line I could not reach.
We still needed one place to share routes. MapMyRun or Runkeeper would both work. Everybody just had to agree on one so the next route did not disappear into an email thread.
The run was done. People came, finished, ate, drank, and stayed too late. Run club could use a little more structure, but it was real.