Rob Perez knows plenty of couples who met through run clubs. Since moving to the area in 2018, he’s visited dozens of such groups and has amassed nearly 20,000 followers as a running influencer on Instagram. Just the other day, he says, “I shared a ride home with someone after a run, and she and her partner are ring-shopping soon.”
So it might be shocking that he’s vehemently against a new trend on social media that touts running clubs as a way to meet other singles. The videos, which made the rounds on TikTok and Instagram Reels earlier this year, had captions like “When dating apps aren’t working so it’s time to join a run club and look confused” and “Done w/ dating apps and got good at running just to go to run clubs to find my wife.”
Some clubs have fed into the notion that these meetups are de facto singles groups. Perez points to a recent experience at a meetup where “if it’s your first time running with that club, they give you a microphone and ask, ‘Are you single?’ ”
Lahaina Mae Mondoñedo founded her group—Every Person Run Club—to cultivate an environment in which anyone feels welcome, regardless of pace or personal history. EPRC has an American Sign Language translator run with them most nights and has hosted Pride and AANHPI-heritage-themed runs. “I don’t like pigeonholing run clubs as dating apps,” she says, “because then you’re saying that everybody who goes there is out to date.”
Now, in addition to seeing to it that runners don’t get left behind, Mondoñedo and other club leaders watch to ensure that they’re not put in uncomfortable situations. “There’s so many females that I see get hit on,” Mondoñedo says. “If they look uncomfortable, I approach them and ask, ‘Are you okay?’ ”
In his visits to clubs around the city, Perez has heard from women who have adopted strategies to ward off unwanted male attention. “One woman I spoke with said, ‘I flash my wedding band, because men talk to me the entire time. The second they see the wedding band, they back off.’ ” Some women, he says, have stopped going to run clubs altogether.
“Running is a very intimidating sport because abilities can be seen right off the bat,” says Alex Shabo, who cofounded Paced DC, a club catering to new runners. “I mean, we’ve been named one of the worst cities to date in, and I 100 percent agree with that. But I would hate to have someone have this second thought in their head that, my gosh, I now need to show up looking a certain way, acting a certain way.”
Perez, Mondoñedo, and Shabo all agree that it’s to be expected—and celebrated—that athletes forge strong relationships, including romantic ones, at clubs. It’s when people join for the sole purpose of hitting on others that, in Perez’s words, “makes it weird.”
This article appears in the October 2024 issue of Washingtonian.
