Last week, the East Aurora Runners celebrated the end of our first ‘Winter Warrior Challenge,’ a 16-week contest to see who could attend the most runs, no matter the weather.  Pictured below are our winners, two couples who are die-hard runners.

(All photos courtesy of Stacy Grinsfelder)

Sarah, far left, is pregnant and got this cute onesie in her gift bag!

I came in second, with another runner, as I missed ONE RUN due to my varicose vein removal in December.  I think I should have gotten a pass for that one, but whatev 🙂  There’s always next year!

I’ve been running with the group since sometime in 2013 and even wrote an article on us that was published in the East Aurora Advertiser in February of 2014. Debbie, pictured below left, started the group in December of 2012.  I missed about half of last year due to a bulging disc, but have been going strong since July.

The photo below is of some of the earliest runners in our original shirts. Since then, we’ve gotten t-shirts from 42 North (gifted to each runner after 10 runs) and neon jackets to promote visibility on our evening runs.

This group has grown from just a few women meeting in a parking lot to 20+ runners each Thursday night.  (I credit much of that to ‘upgrading’ our meet-up location at 42 North…)  I’ve gotten to know some of the runners fairly well and we meet up for additional weekend runs and even movies (!!).  What was once for me (albeit for a short time) an ‘optional’ workout is now a singed-in-ink weekly date on my calendar.  We’ve run in rain (in fact, the night of our party was the wettest run in a long time), snow and heat, but it’s not even about the weather.  It’s about the company of others who are like-minded and genuinely interested in building relationships.

If you’re local and a runner, come out and meet us each Thursday night at 6 p.m. at 42 North–I promise you’ll have a group of friends almost instantly!