“I hate running.”

You and I have heard this. You and I, depending on the day, have probably said this.

So it’s no surprise to hear this familiar refrain coming from Brandon Sherman, a man I met a few weeks ago on a simmering summer evening at Patterson Park.

The catch was that Sherman was wearing a tank top, gym shorts and sneakers. He was, in fact, at that very moment, preparing for a run. It was his first one in a month, but he had been running — off and on — in this park for the last year.

No one was making him run. He had come on his own accord for Monday night laps through the park with the Canton Run Club, one of the city’s hottest local running groups that is less than two years old but draws hundreds every week.

“It’s nice to get some motivation from people,” Sherman said, “and give the same motivation back, too.”

Most days I would not say I “hate” running, but on others it’s not exactly a love affair. I’m flat-footed, have a heavy build and, on many mornings, my body feels more late 30s than mid-30s. But like Sherman — like a lot of people who live in Canton or who are sprinkled throughout the region — I’m drawn to Canton Run Club week after week, work and weather permitting.

Two locals, Alyssa Clark and Caroline Guterres, started the club for fun in February 2024 to dovetail with their interests in personal training and fitness. Within two months, 50 people were showing up to Monday night runs. Guterres remembered thinking, “Wow, I guess this will be our biggest week ever.”

By the summer, they had colossal groups with hundreds of people — so many new attendees each week that they eventually decided to stop doing individual introductions and just run.

“I don’t think we realized how much of a demand there was for a run club in the city until we started it,” Guterres said.

As a runner — sometimes even a reluctant one — it surprises me every week how many people, and how many newcomers especially, are out there in our local public park. Inevitably, it makes me wonder how something that is so suddenly popular, that seemingly gets so many people out the door for this thing they “hate” to do, could have been under the surface for so long, coiled like a spring aching to unload.

It was as if hundreds of people in the neighborhood were waiting for someone simply to ask: “Who wants to get together and run?”

A fad gains speed

Running has become extremely popular in recent years. Industry estimates suggest 50 million Americans were runners or joggers in 2024, partaking in a sport that is (at its most fundamental) pandemic- and recession-proof. Running essentially costs as much as a pair of decent sneakers, and you can start working out as soon as you leave your front door.

Run clubs are also incredibly popular recently, which has drawn new runners and made cynics out of the hardened running hounds. The run clubs, according to the cynical view, are for social media clout, a meat market for singles or a fad that quickly burns out. Other people simply shake their fists at hordes of runners clogging their sidewalks and streets.

These allegations are not unfounded. When I lived in Santa Monica, California, I ran with the Venice Run Club, which asked newcomers to step to a microphone and give their name, where they were from and their relationship status.

But, as much as the “singles club” vibe was a hook for newcomers, and as much as every would-be influencer ran into the runners ahead of them while trying to get a fishbowl camera view of the group, it was a force as a club — drawing 500 or more people for its Wednesday runs. At the summer peak, the club had to arrange for the Venice police to set up road crossings on the 4-mile course.

There is no such logistical wrangling for Canton Run Club — simplicity is the key. The club typically runs just once a week in a mile-long loop completely within Patterson Park. There are no pace groups. Runners choose however many laps they want to do. There is a post-run social hour in the Square, but no one is obligated to attend. The run is free.

“I think the big piece of it is nobody here is judgmental at all,” said Alondra Vargas-Posada, another self-described reluctant runner. “I could walk half of this and run the other half. I could go intermittently and kind of catch up along the way. And nobody is gonna sit there and kinda stare at you.”

Purely by the eye test, I would describe the group as perhaps 99% Millennials and Gen Z — the demographic that has pushed the increased popularity of run clubs in the last few years — but beyond that, there is a dramatic mixture of races, genders, speeds and even limb differences.

The entire affair is casual by design, which of course attracts casual runners. But there are plenty of people from the other end of the spectrum, too.

Highlandtown resident Josh Carback is training for his fifth marathon this fall, and though he runs many miles on his own, he said it took him six to eight months “to work up the courage to walk down the block” to Canton Run Club. After his lengthy Sunday training runs, the Monday run club jaunts are the ideal shakeout.

“You have cramps, bumps and bruises — things are pulling, things are sore,” he said. “It’s nice to get sweaty for a little bit knowing there’s no pressure because technically it’s not a training day.”

I don’t want to imply by centering Canton Run Club in this column that it is somehow more engaging or more special than other groups. What’s fascinating is that the story of the run club in my backyard isn’t unique among the city’s many offerings.

In June, my girlfriend and I pinned on bibs in Patterson Park for the Global Running Day Challenge, which encompassed 669 registered runners from 59 clubs — Faster Bastards, Believe In The Run, Falls Road Running, Be More Run Collective, November Project and so, so many more that you may recognize. According to the organizers, including Charm City Run and Brooks, participants totaled 4,652 miles that day.

We trudged through sweltering humidity, but in that moment I felt proud and surprised by my city, which doesn’t ever seem represented as a running hub.

“I feel like people don’t realize how many there are out in this community, until you come to one,” Clark said. “There are actually way more than I thought.”

Looking for love?

The elephant in the room might just be the singles night stereotype. Are run clubs the new offline dating app? Is it simply a convenient way to gather in-shape 20-somethings who want to do more than jog together?

Yes. No. Somewhere in between.

It’s not a totally undeserved reputation. When I brought a single friend for one of my Venice Club runs, we were hardly a mile in before a guy started chatting her up — taking her out for a date a few days later. A New York club has stoked this agenda by encouraging runners to show up wearing colors that indicate whether they’re single or in a relationship.

This is an aspect of Canton Run Club, too, even though it’s not as overt with the post-run social hour in the Square. Personally, you’re more likely to catch me at the window of BMore Licks than at a bar after a run, but the people who attend these socials tell me it can be a a venue for speed dating if they want it to be.

“I think definitely there is that vibe, but also I made friends through it too, and I don’t need to go to the bar afterwards,” said Yael Hamburger, a marathon runner who enjoys the social aspect. “We just talk and hang out. Whatever you’re looking for, it’s definitely both.”

There is at least one confirmed Canton Run Club couple, Clark said, and some time after they met, they stopped attending. OK, so put that one in the singles night column. But the larger demographic seems interested in friendly relationships, not romantic ones.

“I think it’s one of those things where you have a common interest and you have a common ground, and that’s something that you can look forward to when you meet somebody here,” Vargas-Posada said. “But my friends and I, we come here and we say, ‘Let’s do it, let’s talk to people, let’s have some fun.’ It’s almost like a night out. But a lot of times you’re not searching for something.”

It should be mentioned here that some data has classified Gen Z as a “more sober” generation than its predecessors, something several people I interviewed mentioned, including Guterres. Run clubs cost nothing, are fun and don’t involve recreational drinking. For a lot of people, sore hamstrings are a better day-after ache than a hangover.

But the appeal reaches far beyond singles. One night in July, Connor and Katie Pencek left their kids with their babysitter in Baltimore County — a date night run for Mom and Dad.

“When you have little young kids, so much of your energy goes into that and you want to go out into the world and feel like you’re a part of a community,” Connor said. “And just have fun.”

Needed connection

One of the reasons I feel fascinated by run clubs is, even though I enjoy going to them, I’m not sure where my motivation fits into this grand scheme.

In my off hours, I’m an introvert. When I go to Patterson Park, I generally feel too tense to mingle before the run and too eager to shower afterward to socialize. My headphones are in throughout the run itself. My mode is incognito.

Why even go to a club? Why am I drawn into this Monday night mass ritual?

An interview that resonated with me came from Shamar Greenwood, a 27-year-old strategy analyst who works mostly from home. From 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., he sits in his house looking at a screen. He was never much of an athlete, much less a runner.

But out of a few personal challenges — the end of a relationship, the loss of a grandparent, a grapple with his own health and longevity — Greenwood started getting into running this year. He ran a 5K, experienced a runner’s high and decided this was how he was going to get outside and find a path into new physical spaces and groups.

“I was like, ‘Let me immerse myself back into a sense of community,’” he said. “It was more just like, you gotta grow up and you gotta figure life out.”

That word — “community” — was one I heard a lot from people, even the ones who don’t socialize much outside their familiar circles. American society has suffered from a diminishing well of so-called “third spaces,” social areas that are not work or home. For some people like Greenwood, home is where they work, so even a “second space” can feel like a luxury.

For many of us, the pandemic exacerbated the sense of suffocation. People worked out at home by themselves. For many of the people in these clubs, including the founders, there was an antsy feeling once the peak of the COVID-19 threat passed to get back into the world.

“It made people realize they might have taken outdoor activities, communal activities, for granted,” Guterres said. “Not that they weren’t huge before, but I think that’s kind of what the driving force of the big push of these sober, outdoor activities with the younger generation has come from: wanting to feel connected to other people, meet people, put themselves out there after going from a couple years of pure isolation.”

Carback pointed out that Patterson Park is an easy walk where the “spokes” of many city neighborhoods meet. It connects some transient, youthful parts of Baltimore where folks seem to be waiting to find each other.

“You need an opportunity to meet your neighbors in as organic a way as possible,” he said. “Just the way the market is and the way that the cultural dynamics are, just going for a 2-mile run every week is the easiest way to achieve that.”

I don’t think running is a salve to stitch together what many of us consider a fractured societal fabric, but there is something reassuring that many of us yearn to tie on our shoes and collectively hit the pavement to get a few miles in.

In the search for common ground, finding occasional peace in outdoor communal running tells us something essential about our need for community — that, in an increasingly digital age, we long to socialize in real space.

Week after week, Guterres sees the evidence.

“I always think that there is gonna be a day where we ask that question at the start of our run and no one raises their hands,” she said. “But I’m always proven wrong — every single Monday.”

Running is a pursuit many people do alone. It feels better, somehow, to do it together.