It’s my third date with 2:36:53* (names have been changed to marathon PRs to protect the not-so-innocent). It’s 12:30 p.m., just a few hours after completing my 10-mile run on Heartbreak Hill. Clearly, my date is a runner—a fast one, too—and I’m anxious to tell him about my long run success.
He’s tall, 6-foot to be exact, and handsome. Plus, he’s scored us Red Sox tickets, so it seems he knows the true pathway to my heart. I get out of my Uber at Lansdowne Street, looking fly, and take a look around.
There he is. His lanky body hunched against a wall, beer in hand. But no, I know what you’re thinking, this isn’t cute. He doesn’t look like the bad boy rebel wooing me with his stone-cold eyes. He’s barely able to stand. He looks like a typical Boston guy: dark jeans, Patagonia jacket, backwards Sox hat, oh, and completely wasted.
“HANNAH! Wherearethetickets?” he yell-slurs to me.
I’m annoyed. How is this supposedly talented and very fast marathoner already drunk at noon? More importantly, how the hell am I going to sit through a freaking baseball game with this guy?
“Are they on your phone?” I ask.
He hands the phone to me, almost dropping it, and I ask him to unlock it, which is quite a struggle. I think about bolting, about turning right around and leaving his drunk ass. But I hesitate just a second too long and end up with a sweaty arm wrapped around my shoulders.
He uses me as a crutch to get to our seats and I’m planning my exit strategy. Could I sneak away to the bathroom and just bail? Could I say I was really tired not feeling well after my run? Could I tell him I had a dental emergency and my gums were about to start spontaneously bleeding?
Alas, I cannot muster up the courage to run away and leave this mess of a man swaying to “Sweet Caroline,” by himself. But I won’t return his calls and texts after. No, this would be the last time I see 2:36:53.
I met 2:36:53 the way most single people do nowadays—on an app. The whole dating app world was new to me. Last fall, my sister convinced me to try out Bumble a few months after a devastatingly horrible break up with a man I dated for four years. My ex, let’s stick with the theme here, 2:51:54, and I had lived together, and even planned a future together complete with a New England house and a dog.
Are they on your phone? I ask Runner’s World Running Supports This Marathoners Sobriety marathoners, and though we rarely ran together because of our extreme pace difference, running was what initially brought us together. So when we broke up, I felt like I lost a part of my identity as a runner.
I was determined to find another runner to be my partner in life.
I started swiping. Swiping to find someone whose profile photo showed them wearing a race bib. Swiping to see if their bio said anything about liking running. Swiping to find someone who would openly swap midrun bathroom horror stories Just because two people have a passion for the same thing, it doesnt mean theyre soulmates.
Then I matched with 2:44:56 and we agreed to meet. He lived about an hour and a half away from my new apartment, but he was cute, and seemed normal enough through texts. But in person, something felt off. So I did what any sane person who is dating in the modern era does: I Googled him and discovered some not-so-sweet, kind of illegal things. So that was that for 2:44:56.
every year to the start of the Strava could develop a dating app integration. I took to Twitter to make sure my idea wasn’t too creepy:
The results proved my point and showed that I’m not alone in thinking runners make good partners. We are dedicated. We support one another. We can talk about running for hours, which takes care of awkward first date conversation starters.
But Strava hasn’t developed this technology yet, so I kept searching. I thought maybe the answer was right in front of me—on the TV—in the form of Venmo John. For those of you who do not shamelessly watch the Bachelorette, Venmo John was a contestant on the most recent season and also a marathoner. One night, sitting on my couch, wine in hand, I decided to “slide into his DMs” as the kids say, and sent him a message on Instagram after he had been kicked off the show.
He actually responded, and we compared recent and upcoming races. But, come on. This was never going to work. He lives in San Francisco. Plus, he voluntarily auditioned for and made his way onto a reality TV show. Could I live with myself if I dated a rejected contestant from the Bachelorette? without blinking an eye. It was a lot of swiping.
I went back to swiping and found 3:00 flat. He was interesting and handsome. But what else? The endorphins just weren’t there. After a handful of dates, we hit the relationship wall. We let it fizzle out and I added his marathon PR to my list of runners I’ve liked but not loved.
In the thousand-plus miles I’ve logged over the last year, I’ve thought a lot about why finding my lifelong running partner is so important to me.
I’ve also thought about that past relationship, the one that broke my heart. For the four years we were together, I was the ultimate running girlfriend. I stood at the finish line of a 12-hour ultra, drove him to Hopkinton bathroom horror stories Boston Marathon, waited around at finish lines so he could collect age-group finisher’s awards, and made sure he had what he needed for every race—the right fuel, the right gear, a positive outlook courtesy of my undying support.
And in that time, something happened, maybe subconsciously. I wasn’t caring about my own races as much, and he wasn’t paying back the favors. Maybe this was emblematic of a greater problem in the relationship, foreshadowing the terrible breakup that left me feeling empty.
Right now, I’m three weeks away from the Toronto Waterfront Marathon and I’m crushing workouts, running paces I’ve never reached, and feeling empowered.
The swiping? It’s slowed. It’s not as much a priority as it was before I started training. I realize now that just because two people have a passion for the same thing, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be soulmates or even get along. Because I won’t accept a drunken 2:36:53, a 2:44:56 with a shadowy past, a bland 3:00, and certainly not an unfaithful 2:51:54. I’ve found my identity as a runner again—and as myself without a man slowing me down.
I’ve learned that I need someone who is willing to give as much as I am, who will support me in all my pursuits as I chase down a PR time of my own. Who knows, maybe with all this running, I’ll be able to find my lifelong running partner IRL.
Hannah is a former Social Media Editor for Runner’s World. Hannah started running in February 2012 with a Couch-to-5K program and less than seven months later ran her first half-marathon. You can follow Hannah on Twitter @byHannahMcG.
