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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btrettel 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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cycomanic 14 minutes ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	btrettel 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.