It’s Monday morning. While some students doze off in their 9Ls and others chat with Collis employees, a dozen or two students are finishing up their weekly 13.1-mile ritual.
On a bike ride during the spring term, Finn Blankenship ’28 and Sydney Grogean ’28 discussed the sophomore summers they wanted to have. Blankenship told Grogean about his senior year of high school, when he ran a half-marathon every Thursday in preparation for a half-Ironman: a consecutive 1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike ride and 13.1-mile run.
“I didn’t really know how to train for it, so I was like, ‘If I just run a half-marathon every week, I’ll be fine,’” he said in an interview. “And so, then when I got here [to Dartmouth], I was like, ‘Oh, I should do it on Monday morning, before my 9L.’”
Blankenship did a few half-marathon Monday mornings last fall alone. This summer, he runs to “stay active” and socialize, but also just for the sake of running itself.
“I hate it, honestly, and that’s why I like to do it, because it makes me feel like I’ve done something hard that I didn’t like to do,” he said.
It was Grogean’s idea to invite “a seemingly random collection of people” she thought “would be into it.”
“That [Half-marathon Monday] sounds like what I would want my sophomore summer to be like,” Grogean said. “Just doing that with all my friends, having that to look forward to every week and having the organization — the social aspect. So I was like, ‘What if I just sent out an email later today?’”
Grogean emailed her runner friends and classmates on May 21 that she and Blankenship were planning this “fun chill adventure” and asked them to RSVP “yes” by replying with their favorite poem. They received around 80 poems back, according to Grogean, and as of July 23, the “Half-marathon Monday” Strava group boasts 63 participants. A spreadsheet tracks everyone’s preferred pace and distance, and participants share photos in various group chats.
“The idea is that there’s enough people that are interested [so] you can find someone on that spreadsheet who you want to run with,” Grogean said. “But because of the Strava group, we all get to see what’s going on.”
Grogean estimates around 40 people do “something in the spirit of Half-marathon Monday” each week.
“It’s more about the vibe and the social aspect than it is about the actual running 13.1 miles,” she added.
Different pace groups leave at 5, 6 and 7 a.m.
Blankenship leads the 5 a.m. group, usually accompanied by five to eight other runners. He said running as a group introduced a “healthy peer pressure,” making it harder to sleep in instead.
“During sophomore summer, when everyone’s raging really hard or drinking a bunch or going out more, I think it’s a fun thing to do — destroy your body in the other, healthy way,” he said.
While the 6 and 7 a.m. groups change up their route, every week the 5 a.m. group runs 6.55 miles to the same Vermont house and turns around.
“I like the out-and-back for long distances because you have to go home,” Blankenship said. “You’re halfway there, and you’re like, ‘Oh, shit, well now I have to get home somehow.’”
The route’s “beautiful” Vermont scenery and wildlife keep it interesting.
“We’ve seen a beaver. We’ve seen a fox and a deer,” Blankenship said. “Waiting to see a bear.”
Cate Warden ’28 runs at 6 a.m. with Grogean and a few other girls. Last week, they ran into three more girls who had started after them. The seven of them played music out loud, and Warden said their run was “super conversational” for the entire two hours.
“If you’re in a group, people are able to take turns being the ones talking and listening, and it makes it go by so much faster, and it’s so fun,” she said.
Warden, who started running in college after playing team sports in high school, said Dartmouth’s running culture “makes” a half-marathon “feel like it ‘ain’t no thang.’”
“It seems like something that would be really, really intense, and then it’s just not — it’s so fun and inclusive and chill,” she said.
Leo Weber ’28 leads the 7 a.m. group, usually composed of five to 10 people. Weber met Grogean during freshman fall on a “random” 100-mile bike ride. Weber said Grogean asked him to lead his time group after seeing how “excited” he was about Half-marathon Monday.
“I think the overall idea is quite fun: that people care more about running a half-marathon every Monday than they care about the time it takes out of their day,” he said.
Weber said running is a “big part” of his mental health.
“You kind of find this peace within yourself,” he said. “And I really enjoy that peace.”
Kaitlyn Celentano ’28 RSVPed “yes” with “Oh the Places You’ll Go” by Theodore Geisel ’25.
“I’m a very ‘buy-in’ kind of person,” she said. “I’m always down for an adventure, and it seemed like a really fun way to meet new people.”
Celentano joined the 7 a.m. group for the first two weeks of the term and drove to the Northern Rail Trail, which circumnavigates Mascoma Lake in Lebanon, N.H., for the two subsequent Mondays. On July 20, her friend Madeline Kaufman ’28 came with her and they ran Kaufman’s first ever half-marathon.
“I can run on campus anytime, so it’s worth the 10-minute drive if I’m gonna do a really long run like that,” Celentano said.
She said the physical challenge excited her — her two half-marathons in the past year felt like big events.
“Since I’ve been doing it every week, it feels less of a big deal, and not in a way where I'm less proud of myself for doing it, but in a way that I know that I'm strong enough that I can go and casually do it,” she explained.
Some students sleep in and go later on Mondays, like Jack Best ’28, who told Grogean he was down because the idea was in “the spirit of sophomore summer.”
“I feel like this term is all about getting outside and choosing your own adventure,” he said.
Best runs around 2 or 3 p.m. each Monday, when the sun is high and the day is hot and busy.
“Finding time in your day to squeeze out a two hour run is super tough, especially with the college schedule,” he added.
Iris WeaverBell ’28 is a reporter and editor. She is from Portland, Ore., and is majoring in economics and minoring in public policy.
