By Alex Johnson
The Community Stage
Hutch Run Club is back for the season in full force, with 97 runners taking to the streets of Hutchinson for the first event in April.
Membership is loose; show up, and you’re in! Every Monday at 6:30 p.m., runners, walkers, joggers and everything in between gather for a one-mile, two-mile or three-mile route.
Kara started Hutch Run Club in the summer of 2023 to bring people of all fitness levels together. From a dozen runners meeting in front of Salt City Brewery every week, Hutch Run Club has grown to scores of regular attendees, meeting at several locations around Hutchinson to pound the pavement together.
People show up for all kinds of reasons and describe it as encouraging, fun, supportive, accountability, healthy, motivation—and my personal favorite—community.
Several runners were inspired to run their first half marathons after joining Hutch Run Club. Bruce started running to reduce his risk from diabetes, and two years after joining Hutch Run Club, he is running half marathons on his weekends. Kara met her husband, Alec, at Hutch Run Club. Terry is an inspiration to us all as a 78-year-old runner who is at every event and many of the area races, as well, wearing his signature race t-shirts from decades past.
There are many reasons I run. I started running around the neighborhood when I was in high school because an eminent bassoonist told me it would improve my breath support. (What a nerd, right?) I continued to run, as I found I genuinely enjoyed the exertion, the challenge and the dedicated time to think without other distractions.
I always thought it was ridiculous to pay race registration fees to do something I could do for free, on my own time. But I signed up for my first 5K as a reason to leave the house while I was losing a family member to cancer. It was an opportunity to process all the emotions I couldn’t at home. It led to a community I could lean on when it all got to be too much. I found it first with the She Runs This Town group in Wichita, and when I moved to Hutchinson, I found it again at Hutch Run Club. That is why my word for Hutch Run Club is “community.” And that is why 97 people chose to show up to the first Run Club this season.
I’m part of what I like to think of as the unofficial “exhibition team” of Hutch Run Club who spend our time and treasure signing up for races in Wichita, Hutch and surrounding small towns. (I even won a 5K in Sterling! A small crowd definitely improves my odds.) We take starting-line selfies of us wrapped in as many layers as we can find for the winter runs and enjoying the complementary ice creams and donuts of the summer runs. We all know it’s all about the snacks, right?
At the end of this season’s first Hutch Run Club event, there were groups sitting in the grass, making plans for their week, a circle of “exhibition team members” discussing their next races, and a round of introductions of recent strangers, but fast friends, by the gazebo. It is these moments, not just the silent sweaty ones on the sidewalks, that make Hutch Run Club special.
Whether you are motivated by fitness, accountability or looking for an inviting community that shows up for each other week after week during the season, you can find it at Hutch Run Club. Will I see you there next Monday?