The Houston Striders are a city-wide running club with over 600 members. Our members range from walkers to Boston-qualified marathoners and veteran ultramarathoners. Our membership is split evenly between singles and families, and between males and females. While we are very serious about running and fitness, we are a low key club in that we always emphasize fun, service and fellowship over competition.
Striders run - The Houston Striders are active participants in road races in the metropolitan Houston area. We are the three time defending champions in the HARRA Fall Club and Team competitions. We also have strong representation at our favorite out-of-town races, especially the Austin Marathon, and Corpus Christi Beach to Bay Marathon Relay. Many of our members are avid ultra-relay fans and have participated in ultra-relays in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and New Hampshire. This year the Striders had four teams competing in the Texas Independence Relay in March.
Four times per year the membership votes on a "Strider Race of the Quarter". All Striders completing the race get $15 of their entry fee paid by the club. What a good deal!
We have three club running coaches who are RRCA-certified. They are available to club members for FREE consultation and training schedule preparation.
Striders train - The Striders have their own performance-based marathon and half marathon training program called SMART. It's very tough, but loads of fun - nearly 200 of us participate. And, it's FREE to Houston Striders! The Striders also hold their Strider Warmup Series each Fall with 5 events including the annual Tour de Memorial, an 18 mile November romp through the streets of West Memorial that stops at the homes of various club members for refreshments and encouragement, and a 21 mile training run on the Houston Marathon course. FREE to Strider members!
Striders volunteer - The lifeblood of our club is the Koala/Luke's Houston Half Marathon, the first race in the Marathon Warm-Up Series. We provide all race management for the Half Marathon and scores of volunteers. We also provide race management for a variety of 5k races. We also manage the water station at mile 21.5 of the Chevron Houston Marathon and a water station at the Marathon Warm-Up Series 30k. Striders actively support and are well-represented on the HARRA CPR/AED team.
Striders play - Our social calendar is full of opportunities to have fun in non-running settings. Each year we hold our Spring chili cookoff, Summer picnic, Fall Astros baseball excursion and Winter formal dinner.
We hold monthly meetings throughout the year. Four of these are formal meetings with FREE food and guest speakers covering a wide variety of topics such as orienteering, the RRCA convention, triathlon preparation, ultramarathoning, and weight training for runners. We also hold two informal meetings in which we have a club novelty run followed by FREE food and fellowship.
A special occasion for the club is that we always have active participation in the Bayou City Classic 10k centipede competition. We've entered teams with themes such as Racing the Titanic, Cake Walkers, Sea Biscuit, Get SMART, Winter Olympics, Penguins, Runaway Brides, Texas 7, Blair Witch Project, Houston Fire Fighters, Detour, Houston Light Rail, and 101 Dalmations.
Striders keep in touch - Once a month we assemble and distribute our monthly newsletter Stridelines. Stridelines has won 5 awards from the RRCA since 2000 in their annual club newsletter competitions, including the 2007 award for best e-newsletter. We also maintain a very active email distribution list called Stride4Fun that we use for informal communications. And, we have a web site, www.houstonstriders.org, that provides general information about the Houston Striders.
Please come join us, all are welcome! Annual membership is $20 for singles, $25 for families. For further information on the Houston Striders call our hotline at (713) 797-8601 or email us at info@houstonstriders.org.
It's easy to be a Houston Strider! Join the club or renew your membership online.
The Striders continue to get our evening group run fix! All Houston Striders, their guests, and anybody who turns up are invited to join the SMART Club Runs.
