Nov 21, 2003   | COMMENTS     

UNLIKE MANY OTHER local sports clubs, D.C. Front Runners doesn’t break for the winter.

After toasting their members who recently completed the New York, Baltimore, Montgomery County, and Marine Corps Marathons, D.C. Front Runners now is turning its attention to training and inspiring its members for upcoming local holiday runs, such as D.C.’s Turkey Trot 5K and December’s Jingle Bell Run for Arthritis.

The group offers a dizzying number of options during the week for all types of runners at various skill levels — including multi-mile long runs on Sundays and Tuesday night loops around the National Mall. Some Front Runners members are, in fact, walkers who arrive early, secure a head start, and join the rest at the finish.

But the linchpin in the weekly calendar is the Saturday morning Dupont Circle run, a mainstay for the club since 1981. With the size, speed and giddiness of a flash mob, dozens of runners congregate on 23rd and P Streets, NW, at 10 a.m. each Saturday, bringing wide grins and anxious feet.

They huddle together for quick announcements and descend into Rock Creek Park for three- and four-mile loops, before returning to a nearby park for bagels, coffee and chitchat.

BUT FOR ALL of the success the club has enjoyed after 20 years, its membership has been increasingly veering toward a gay male demographic. Over the past couple years, only a handful of women have been showing up for the hallmark Saturday run.

“I’ve seen plenty of women come for a week or two and feel outnumbered by the men,” says Joan Nugent, a member since 1992. “It’s disappointing that many don’t feel comfortable. This is the nicest group of guys I’ve ever met.”

On the whole, however, running has certainly been gaining more popularity among women in America. As a sport, it is extremely accessible. It keeps you fit, relaxed and focused, and has innumerable benefits for long-term health, particularly in women. And recent studies have shown that it reduces risks for osteoporosis, breast cancer, diabetes, and can ease menstrual tension.

EVEN THEIR MOST recent past president, Taneen Carvell, appears genuinely puzzled as to the best way to attract more women to the regular roster of Saturday runners.

“It’s something I’ve been trying to figure out for years,” she says. She acknowledges that some women feel intimidated by the men.

She adds that other cities’ Front Runners are experiencing similar dips in women’s attendance.

As an option, Front Runners now offers a very successful women’s brunch, a monthly rotating get-together hosted by different female participants where a morning run is followed by hours of socializing in the host’s home.

It has worked as a strategy to bring more gay women to the sport, but some worry it could lead to further segregation of an historically very unified club.

Could it be that after decades of banding together to fight injustices, gay men and lesbians are slowly diverging from one another into parallel yet separate existences? As we become more integrated into mainstream society, perhaps we feel less of that shared sense of discrimination and, therefore, feel less of a natural bond with one another.

We unify well with one another in advocating for our civil rights, but when we leave the fund-raisers or exit the courtroom, we seem to walk in increasingly separate directions. The more we have acceptance, the less we have in common.

Blake Rushin, another Saturday regular, however, is optimistic about more women joining the group.

“This group is wonderful at keeping me motivated and allowing me to improve,” he says.

This wonderful attitude proves that, regardless of gender, when gay men and women get together to inspire each other, all runs are downhill.