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Several members of the BCOutdoors Run Club at last year’s Strawberry Jam half marathon at Darnell Farms. They are planning to do it again this year, according to club founder Kelli Walsh (pictured second from right).
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
A group of half a dozen people in brightly colored exercise clothes stand in jogging shoes, ready to run, in the parking lot of the Deep Creek picnic area.
One woman, who says she mostly walks, asks the others how long they’re planning to run. She wants to meet up with them at the same time as they plan to finish and wants to calculate how long she’ll be out there herself. Others talk about other runs they’ve done recently.
This is the BCOutdoors Run Club. Founder Kelli Walsh says it’s inclusive – runners and walkers alike are welcome to come join them.
“The experience with the group pushes you to go longer, go harder or go further,” she says. “It brings people together who are like-minded.”
Collaboration and teamwork are the cornerstones of the group. By being a part of a group, they’re encouraging each other to keep going. Like an ecosystem, they all start to flourish.
One member, Elektra Kirby, recently moved to the area from New York, and says the group’s positivity was a selling point to keep coming back.
“I just Googled ‘running groups’ in the area,” she says. “Running with a group makes it easier – it makes you want to get out and run. I’ve never met anyone negative here. They just encourage you to get better.”
It is what it sounds like. Walsh and a group of companions meet up around 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and just get some exercise, running around one to four miles per evening. It’s easy to join – those interested can literally just show up Tuesday evenings wherever the group decides, posted by Kelli on Facebook well ahead of time. Usually, they start around 6 p.m. or 6:20 p.m., with the exact starting time confirmed in advance online.
Claire Cashio, who currently lives out of state but will be moving to Bryson City soon, says she came upon the group by accident.
“I was just at BCOutdoors, I was visiting,” she says. “They came in and I overheard them. I was like ‘wait, you’re a running group?’”
As she wanted to start running more, anyway, it was a serendipitous meeting.
Kelli ran her first marathon with her father, Tom Walsh, at 13 years old and the experience left her with mixed emotions.
“I thought ‘this is awesome,’ and toward the end I was thinking ‘why did I ever sign up for this?’” she says in good humor. But she stuck with it.
Tom had his own running club when she was young. He infected her with the bug, too, and he’s a part of her current Run Club, too, joining them every week to get in some exercise. He says the group he ran was “almost exactly” like Kelli’s current one.
Goals and challenges
For much of the winter, the group was meeting at the high school track – with the shorter days, they didn’t want to chance getting lost anywhere. Now that the weather is warming and the days are longer, they’re meeting at some of the area’s many nature parks like Deep Creek.
They also do longer runs on weekends – Tom says sometimes they go as long as 10 miles then.
Sometimes, the runs get challenging.
“I learned there was a significant difference between a hill and a bump,” Cashio says. “It was a steep learning curve. A bump, you can see the top of it. A hill, you can’t. We were going up a hill, and I had to hold on for dear life. They were all scurrying up like mountain goats. But it was a great run.”
Some members are getting in shape for the Strawberry Jam half marathon, taking place in May at Darnell Farms.
“A good chunk of us are doing it,” Kelli said. “Some have just finished marathons, some are doing ultra marathons. That’s the whole idea of the club, anyone working to train, we can help with that. Or you can run just to run, or run for exercise.”
Russell Bowling, who commutes from Franklin to run with the group, is recovering from an injury recently – though he isn’t letting that stop him from training to go run the Boston Marathon soon.
“I won’t be as fast as usual,” he says. “But my goal is just to finish.”
Another group member, Jeremy Bailey, is just getting back into running after falling some time ago and fracturing his shoulder. Yesterday, he just did a 10-mile run for the first time since getting back to it, he says.
On the benefits of the club, Kelli said it was a social thing, allowing people to meet each other and growing a community around running.
“It’s just good to get out and run,” she said. “To find new places to run, to have a group and feel safe. Anything to get out and move is excellent. It can be a long-term thing if you keep up with it. You can do it at an older age. It’s a really good long-term goal of exercise.”