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Comment by eitally | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I've found that running clubs attract diverse groups and tend toward activities that create ample opportunities for smalltalk and meeting people with shared interests outside of the sport. This doesn't hold true for most other sporting activities, in my experience.

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Interesting. I was a decent runner in high school, way back. I'm a cyclist now, but I found that cycling groups tend to either be focused on athletic performance or activism and I don't particularly care for either at this point. I'll have to try some running groups as there are a lot of local ones.

That's interesting, but in my experience cycling groups are the most social individual sports groups (even more social than many team sports even). Even the performance focused groups tend to stop at the coffee shop for some banter after the ride, and some less performance oriented groups seem to be more focused on the coffee than even the ride itself.

Are you talking about road cycling or mountain biking? My experience is definitely with the former. I think it helps that in group rides you automatically end up riding next to someone new and chatting along. Easily breaks the ice.

Hmm... okay, I'll try some more local cycling groups as there are a lot of them. Maybe one lesson to take from all the comments I'm reading here is that there's a lot of variation between groups.

I'm thinking road cycling. When I was in grad school, a decade ago, I briefly participated in a student road cycling group. It was very performance oriented as I recall. I was definitely slower than them and my heavy steel commuter bike contrasted strongly with their lighter racing bikes. I talked to some of them, but not during the rides. I was older than the vast majority of them as I recall and in retrospect that might have prevented me from making friends there.

15 years ago I started cycling, by going to amateur XC races. I did that for almost 10 years and it was fun, I got some friends doing it and it worked great for a while. A combination of cycling injury and many people leaving the country ended that endeavor, but it is an example of some simple and practical approach. I was not even looking to socialize, but improve my sedentary life, I found others with similar interests.

I have a childhood friend that is cycling, but he lives in the Netherlands. There people who are cycling more than daily drivers are interested in athletic performance or activism and it kind of sucks, but he got friends skiing and scuba diving, as long as there are common interests you will find some decent people to socialize with.

My experience was sadly quite the opposite. When I moved to my current city two decades ago, I started attending a run club because I wanted to train for my first marathon and figured it would be a great opportunity to meet new people. Unfortunately, the group was extremely insular and eventually realized I was wasting my time expecting the group to engage with me in any meaningful way.

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