The pace the fastest runners set

A weekend running group in Riyadh begins with a few friends and an easy loop around a park before the heat comes up.

The ones who turn up every single time are the strongest runners. They are generous with advice, they bring new routes, and they want more. A longer loop. A quicker pace. Hill repeats on Saturdays. Each request is fair, and because they are always there and always talking, the group slowly bends toward them.

Meanwhile the people the group was started for, the ones who wanted company and a reason to get out of bed, find themselves alone at the back. They are too polite to complain. They simply stop coming.

The keenest members are the easiest to listen to. Their wishes are clear, they say them aloud, and they show up. That is precisely why they are a trap. What they ask for is real, but it is not what is wanted by the many people who might have joined and never will.

Whoever we choose to serve first decides what we become. A group that follows its fastest runners turns into a group for fast runners, whether anyone meant it to or not.

The groups that keep growing do something quietly different. They welcome the strong runners and still set the pace for the newcomer, so that someone finishing a first kilometre counts as fully as someone finishing a fortieth. The fast ones can still run ahead. They just do not get to decide who else belongs.