Interactions with People in Running Classes (II)

The running class I attended composed of people from all walks of life. We had elites who aimed at finishing a full marathon within three hours and some first-timer trying to get it done within six hours. The age range of classmates started from early twenties to up to late sixties.

Therefore it won’t be surprising that we had very colourful chemistry among classmates.

Given the diversity of classmates, we were trained in separate groups according to our targeted finishing speed. We had three big groups and within each groups we were further divided into some subgroups, with several people each.

Running is good to me because I don’t need to finish the training by interacting with others. Even within the subgroups, when every one tried to concentrate in completing the programme for each session, we would spend more time catching our own breath than chitchating around.

There would always be one or two more talkative ones attempted socialising with others on whatever topics crossed their minds. And some advance aged motherly classmates would offer to share drinks and fruits whenever possible. Moreover, a few fashion expert-like classmates (I suspect they were primary school teachers hence had a habit to correct others) would comment on the gear of whoever came near to them, mostly saying how the shoes were not good enough or the shorts worn would slow us down.

It was quite amusing to see these people though I would avoid them because I am not comfortable to sustain any conversation with acquaintances, who are no different from strangers to me.

In any case, I treated these opportunities to be enlightened on what other people in the society were doing and behaving. Such experience helped me feel the pulse of others without causing much psychological pain and at the same time I could get some dual benefit from running training.