Claire Wind

Name: Claire Wind

Current Location: Brooklyn, New York

“High Fives and Good Vibes”

After running competitively in high school and college,  I moved to NYC and decided that running and I needed to break-up. I wanted to focus on my career and thought that making new friends and having to schedule runs into my day would take away time from that. Little did I know, 2 years later, all of my friends would come from this running club.

I found out about TMIRCE from the “Valentine’s Day Pub Run” held by Brooklyn Running Company. Granted, I hadn’t run in over a year and was in no shape to drink a beer every mile and run some more, but my college teammate was hosting the event so I went to support her. The group I was running with (God bless them for staying with me; I was a mess!) told me about this informal running group, “You go at your own pace, for however long you want, then you hang out and eat!” Sounds like my kind of running group! After the run, I liked the TMIRCE page on Facebook and that was that.

It took me over a year to muster the courage to attend bRUNch. But when I finally did, I kicked myself for not running with the bRUNch crew sooner. During the run, everyone was giving me high-fives and asking me about my week, as if I’d been a part of this group for ages. I left that day with a huge runner‘s high, something I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

I came back the next week (and the week after that, and eventfully all TMIRCE events) because the TMIRCE bRUNch crew made me feel more welcomed than I’d felt anywhere, while living in NYC. The city can be a hard, cold place; every man/woman for themselves. But when I show up to run for a TMIRCE event, I know I will see a ton of smiling faces, receive all of the high-fives, and run with an awesome group of people.