This is a story about a woman who joined a running group by accident, what she did once she realized what she had joined, and what has happened in the two years since.
The woman — I will call her Delphine, because she chose that name and would not tell me why — is forty-two. She lives in Chicago. She works in commercial real estate. She has, by her own account, never in her adult life been what anyone would describe as athletic. She has, prior to the events of this story, never voluntarily run for more than about ninety seconds.
Two weeks ago, she ran a marathon.
The mistake
The mistake happened on a Saturday morning in May of 2023.
Delphine, at that time, had been going through what she has described to me as “a slow, unfashionable, low-drama version of a midlife crisis.” She was not unhappy exactly. She was, she has told me, “the kind of unhappy that does not qualify for a name.” She had decided, in an effort to correct this, to start doing new things. She had signed up for a pottery class. She had subscribed to a foreign film service. She had begun, tentatively, to consider joining a book club.
A colleague at work had mentioned a book club that met in Lincoln Park on Saturday mornings. Delphine, without gathering many additional details, had put “Lincoln Park book club, Saturday 8 a.m.” into her calendar.
On the Saturday in question, she got up. She dressed as one dresses for a book club — a linen blouse, dark jeans, a canvas tote bag containing a paperback she had bought secondhand and had not yet started. She drove to Lincoln Park. She walked to the entrance nearest to the address her colleague had given her.
She saw, on the small stretch of grass beside the path, a group of about twelve people in athletic clothing, gathered around a woman with a clipboard.
Delphine, having no other reference point, assumed this was the book club. She walked over.
The introduction
The woman with the clipboard smiled at Delphine. The woman said: “First time?”
Delphine said: “Yes.”
The woman said: “Great. What’s your pace?”
Delphine, at this point, had a brief internal moment that she has described to me as “the exact moment I stopped being a person who understood what was happening.” She said, because she could think of nothing else to say: “I don’t have a pace yet.”
The woman with the clipboard said: “That’s fine. We do a five-K to start. Beginners in the back. Just try to keep up.”
Delphine, in a linen blouse and dark jeans, holding a canvas tote bag containing a paperback, said: “Okay.”
Nobody, in the group, said anything about her clothes.
She has told me she thinks this is the part of the story most people don’t believe. But she has told me she is certain of it. Nobody said anything. Twelve people in running clothes, one woman in a linen blouse, and not a single person made a joke or asked a question or gave her a strange look. They simply, kindly, absorbed her into the group.
She has come to believe that this was, in some way she does not fully understand, the moment her life changed.
The first run
Delphine ran, in a linen blouse and dark jeans, holding a canvas tote bag, for approximately three-quarters of a mile before she stopped.
The rest of the group, by that point, was well ahead of her. She stood on the path, breathing heavily, watching them recede. She has told me she considered, at that moment, three options.
The first was to leave. To simply turn around, walk to her car, and forget the entire episode. She has told me she considered this for perhaps four seconds.
The second was to continue. To try to catch up. To finish the run. To reveal herself, at some point, as a person who had wandered in by mistake. She has told me she considered this for slightly longer.
The third was the option she chose.
The third option was to sit down on a bench, wait for the group to return, and — when they came back around — join them for the second half of the loop.
She has told me she cannot explain why she chose the third option. She has told me she was not, at that point, thinking clearly. She has told me she was, in some sense, “committed.”
She waited on the bench for approximately forty-five minutes. The group came back. They saw her. The woman with the clipboard smiled at her and said: “Good pace, Delphine.”
Delphine, who has told me she has never been more embarrassed in her adult life, said: “Thanks.”
She joined the second half. She walked. Nobody said anything.
The next Saturday
Delphine has told me that she did not, on the drive home from Lincoln Park that first Saturday, intend to go back.
She has told me she intended, once she was home, to google “Lincoln Park Saturday book club” and locate the actual book club, which she now understood she had missed.
She has told me she did not do this.
She has told me she does not know why.
She has told me that instead, on the following Wednesday, she bought a pair of running shoes. She has told me that on the Thursday after that, she bought a pair of running shorts, and then, in a separate transaction, a T-shirt of the kind athletic people wear. She has told me that on the following Saturday, she went back to Lincoln Park.
The woman with the clipboard, when she saw Delphine, smiled and said: “You came back.”
Delphine said: “Yes.”
The woman said: “Good.”
The two years
I will summarize.
Delphine has, in the two years since that Saturday, become — by any measure other than her own private accounting — a member of a running group. She has, in those two years, missed exactly four Saturdays. She has, in those two years, gone from being unable to run three-quarters of a mile to running, two weeks ago, a full marathon in a time she has described to me as “not fast, but real.”
She has, in those two years, become close friends with three of the women in the group. She has attended one wedding. She has been to three baby showers. She has, on two separate occasions, had one of the women stay in her guest room during a difficult month.
She has told me, in three separate conversations, that these are the closest friends she has made in her adult life.
She has not, in two years, told any of them about the book club.
Why she has not told them
I asked Delphine, in our third conversation, why she has not told them.
She has given me several answers. I will try to reproduce them fairly.
She has told me that she was, initially, embarrassed. She has told me that she did not want to reveal, in the early weeks, that she had joined the group by mistake. She has told me that she was afraid, if she told them, that they would gently correct the record — that they would say “oh, you should have told us” and quietly stop expecting her at Saturday runs, and that the whole thing would dissolve.
She has told me that as the weeks became months, this initial embarrassment shifted. She has told me she began to feel that the story was, in some way, private — that it belonged to her, and that telling it would somehow give it away.
She has told me that as the months became a year, and then two years, the story became something else. Not embarrassment. Not privacy. Something closer to reverence.
She has told me: “I am afraid that if I tell them, the whole thing will turn out to have been a joke I was in on the whole time. And it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. I got there by accident. It changed my life. I don’t want to be a person who tells that story at a dinner party.”
I said: “But it’s a good story.”
She said: “I know. That’s the problem.”
The book she never read
Delphine has told me, in passing, that she still has the paperback she brought to Lincoln Park that first Saturday.
She has never read it. It is on a shelf in her living room, in the same place she put it after that first run. She has told me she has, on several occasions, picked it up. She has told me she has, several times, read the first two pages. She has told me she has never made it further than page four.
She has told me she does not want to read it.
She has told me she does not know why.
The moment two weeks ago
Two weeks ago, when Delphine finished the marathon, three of the women from the group were waiting at the finish line for her. They had signs. One of the signs said “GO DELPHINE.” One of them said “YOU WERE MADE FOR THIS.” The third one, which had been made by the woman who had originally held the clipboard, said “FROM 3/4 OF A MILE TO 26.2 — WE LOVE YOU.”
Delphine, who had by that point been running for over four hours, saw the third sign and stopped running.
She has told me she stopped running approximately fifty yards from the finish line.
She has told me she stood there for what felt like a long time, staring at the sign, trying to process the fact that the woman with the clipboard — whose name she now knew, whose children she now knew, whose divorce she had been peripherally aware of — had, at some point in the past two years, calculated how far three-quarters of a mile was.
The woman with the clipboard, from behind the barrier, saw that Delphine had stopped. She waved her forward. She said, loud enough that Delphine could hear it: “You have to finish.”
Delphine finished.
She did not, at any point during that day, or during the celebration dinner that followed, or during any of the phone calls that have followed since, tell any of them about the book club.
She told me the story, over three phone calls, this month.
She has asked me — and I have agreed — not to identify her group.
She has told me she is not sure whether she will ever tell them.
She has told me she is not sure it matters.
What this is
I have, in the weeks since Delphine first told me this story, thought a great deal about the ways adult people find their people. We tend, culturally, to place a lot of emphasis on the intentional version. The dating app. The networking event. The affinity group. The subreddit. We assume that finding one’s people is a matter of accurately identifying what one is looking for and then diligently pursuing it.
Delphine did not accurately identify what she was looking for. She was, in fact, looking for something else entirely. And what she found was, by every measure that matters, better than what she was looking for.
I do not know what to make of this, entirely. I think it is a small argument for showing up to the wrong thing. I think it is a slightly larger argument for not correcting the record when the wrong thing turns out, unexpectedly, to be right. (For a related earlier piece on the accidental relationships that form the shape of modern adult life, see the Wattalife story about the woman who has been receiving someone else’s mail for nine years.)
Delphine, when I asked her what she has learned from all of this, thought for a long time.
She said: “I have learned that I was, for a long time, waiting to find the group of people I was supposed to be with. And that the group of people I was supposed to be with was, apparently, a group of runners who I met because I couldn’t find a book club. I don’t think there’s a lesson in that. I think there’s just the thing that happened.”
She paused.
She said: “I run three times a week now. I don’t know who I am.”
She said: “I like her a lot.”
—
Margot Hale is the editor of Wattalife. She has, since reporting this story, considered whether any of the groups she is currently in are, in fact, the groups she thinks they are. She has decided, tentatively, that most of them are. She is not entirely sure about one of them. She is going to keep going.