Do running clubs give daters a leg up? I don’t think so

Get off the apps, and lace up the Hokas.

Rumor has it, your next romantic partner will be found huffing and puffing as you jog alongside them.

That’s not quite what I found, in this second installment of Harrison’s (mis-)adventures in dating.

Others, though, seemed to take the opportunity — and the whole talking-while-exerting thing — in stride.

The moment I set foot in the crowded parking lot on Dell Avenue where the Venice Running Club convenes for their weekly 4.5-mile “Mobbin Wednesday” loop, I had an eerie feeling.

To me, this wasn’t a dating scene. It was the reincarnation of high school track practice.

I’ve been running for a long time. I was the worst guy on varsity cross country in high school, and I ran club nationals in college. In adulthood, I’ve settled into the habit of running a couple half marathons a year (as well as the sadistic twilight Dodgers Foundation 10K, whose steep hills in the darkness truly puts the “ravine” in Chavez Ravine).

The thing about high school track practice was that it was fun in the moment. But like most people, I really have no desire to relive the feeling of locker rooms and sweaty makeout sessions with braces at homecoming dances in the gym.

But plenty of people have used the running club system as a dating pool — often, to infamous results.

The unfortunately named Rawdawg Run Club in Austin — with the motto, “sexy faces and sexy paces” — notoriously became a community menace, attracting upward of 800 shirtless dudes and scantily-clad gals on run days. The group, accused of disorderly conduct and operating without a permit, was banned by the Texas capital in 2024.

Time magazine recently argued that some run clubs in places as far afield as Lisbon, Portugal, had become “horrible places to date,” with all the same problems as online dating.

(Turns out that toxic relationships exist among the cardiovascularly-endowed, too).

Then there are the running “purists” slash run-club “haters,” who note that run clubs often clog bike paths, block traffic and celebrate “phony” new-to-the-sport runners who just seem to be in it for “the clout.”

Look, I’m not one to begrudge how people arrive at running, a healthy form of exercise, but the haters may have a point.

Venice Run Club, founded in 2020, hosts thousands of runners on Mobbin Wednesdays, a crowd so dense that club organizers are compelled to shout unintelligible instructions through a megaphone.

The runners then go on to clog up the street, then the Venice boardwalk, and every sidewalk in between Abbott Kinney and the Venice Canals.

As a primarily solo runner, I’d hate to be overtaken by the mob when alone, but swimming with the current was a bit like riding whitewater rapids down the Grand Canyon.

Fun, with the added thrill of mild danger — or not so mild, as runners weaved in and out of traffic, while (mostly) respecting traffic signals.

Now for some Richard Attenborough-styled observations: Some clusters of bros ran in formation. Gals usually ran in pairs, armed with wingladies. Conversations tended to be confined within the male and female groups, respectively, rarely breaking out between each other.

Only at stoplights, when the stampede slowed and gathered into a bottleneck, was there a chance for a stray glance, a sharp greeting, a compliment disguised as a neg.

For me, it was hard to flirt with anyone, what with the breathing and all.

Mobbin Wednesday wrapped up in the parking lot where it began, where a fleet of promotional trucks handed out newfangled protein drinks and snacks.

Was this environment, featuring the fitness-industrial complex hawking “energy” products at the end of a road race, the right setting to chat up a woman whose knee cartilage was as degraded as my own?

Given that my tank was drenched and my eyes sunken with a thousand-yard stare, it just wasn’t going to happen for me that night.

Run clubs like the one in Venice help fill a social gap left by our digitally-distanced selves.

But I found the experience too much like a way for runners to relive high school glory (or trauma) for me to become a regular.

Maybe I’m a hater, but when I run I like to embrace the individual zen I get by making my way alone, one step at a time.

After the main event, Venice Run Club directs members to the nearby Baja Cantina for après-run drinks, a bit aggressive given that we’d only jogged 4 miles and it was mid-week. (Ask me out on a date first, VRC!)

If the mingling magic was real, the Cantina was probably where it happened, but on this occasion, I had to run.

Harrison Blackman is an editorial assistant for The California Post.