Ott City Run Club founder Kayla Hunt warms up at Dundonald Park. Anna Carroll, Centretown NewsLace up, Ottawa. Local runners are enjoying new opportunities to join groups and enter races.
Members of the recently formed Ott City Run Club meet every Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. all year-round at Dundonald Park for a casual five-kilometre run around Centretown.
“Dundonald Park is a great meeting space for everyone from Sandy Hill to Westboro,” said Kayla Hunt. “It’s easy to get to with parking all around it.”
The Somerset Street green-space, just across from Tim Hortons and The Beer Store, is where the club has met weekly since it started about a year ago.
Hunt said membership has grown from just her and her husband at first to “at least 20-30 people per week.” And they’re always looking for new people, she added.
The big draw for Hunt? The “crazy team spirit,” she said. “We were in Toronto with a group of 10 and everyone got a personal best. It was amazing to see: crazy team spirit through the whole route.”
Hunt says half of the club’s members haven’t been avid runners before. It’s not about competition, she said, but supporting and encouraging each runner’s goals.
“Every person that comes out wants to be a better runner,” Hunt said, “and we just want to build the running community and gain partnerships in Toronto, Vancouver and so on, so we can travel and support each other — maybe someday even get sponsored.”
“There’s been a change with a focus on urban running groups,” she said, and “more young runners are taking to the streets. The running community is building.”
To get new runners into the sport, the smaller events throughout the year are all about “building the community of runners,” according to John Halvorsen, race director of Run Ottawa.
He said 2017 should be a particularly good year for runners — “hopefully with less construction.” LRT tunneling, LeBreton Flats redevelopment and other road rebuilds have made running downtown somewhat like negotiating an obstacle course.
Run Ottawa is the organization behind the Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend and Scotiabank Ottawa Marathon, scheduled for the May 27 weekend in 2017.
Halvorsen said groups like Ott City “provide a community for people to participate … It’s nice to see. And people have different wants and needs with different clubs that target different areas.”
He added: “It really makes it welcoming for runners to participate and we think that’s great.”
Halvorsen mentioned that aside from the casual run clubs with friends, there’s also specific interest groups, notably RunTOBeer, a Toronto-based running group. RunTOBeer is exactly what it sounds like: a run to the pub for a cold pint. They run all year, too.
Phil Marsh, the regional manager of The Running Room, said “we’re definitely seeing a good growth in community-based run clubs.”
Marsh has seen all sorts of new runners burn out, but he said “you’ve got to have patience” and look at the social side of it — starting with a buddy and making friends doing it.