Sometimes you need more than one running buddy and sometimes a run club is about more than running. For Vancouver’s Foxtrotters run club, that means run a little, lift-up your mates a lot and save time to party. Foxtrotters could lay claim to being the city’s most social group of running buddies, regularly tackling the trails in and around Pacific Spirit Park.
The group, whose name was inspired by original member Nicholas Foxcroft, came together 15 years ago after a Vancouver Sun Run training program and they have carried on since, with as many as 36 runners gathering three times a week, capping runs with tea and coffee, celebrating birthdays and Christmas parties.
“The trees know all our secrets,” says run leader Josephine De Virgilio, 52. “We either try to solve the problems of the world while we run in that forest, or if we can’t do that, we exchange a recipe. As long as the legs will let us, we’ll be in there as a group, big or small, feeling our best or not. Just for one more day. Our running buddies make it possible.”
“There’s accountability in the group,” says Foxtrotter Trisha Hiland, 67. “If you commit to meeting other people for a run, you’re going to show up.”
