Uncovering the Sweet Origins: The Coffee Shop Sugar Story

Len and Steph met at a coffee shop and connected over their shared love/hate relationship with running. Let’s hear how they tell their story!

Chapter One: Steph’s bad morning

When I met Len, I was sweaty, angry, in pain, tired, and ready to tell off the next person who dared talk to me. Romantic, right?

At the time of our almost disastrous first encounter, I was outside of a coffee shop, hoping for something with enough caffeine, sugar, and ice to help me recover after a 5-mile run. At the time, I hated running. It was torture, and I couldn’t understand why people would ever do this for fun.

I, for one, wasn’t doing this for fun, but out of obligation. My lifelong friend, Melissa, had this crazy idea to run a marathon before our 30th birthday, eleven months later. Here’s the kicker: she wanted to run it someplace wild. In Alaska. And somehow, through a lot of friendship guilt and bribery, she convinced me to sign up with her.

Only now, two months into training, Melissa was starting to flake. She had texted me earlier that morning saying that she had stayed out late last night and wouldn’t make it for the run. By the time I got the text, I was already laced up and out the door. So, what was I going to do, go back to bed? Go to work early? No, I was raging, and I was going to rage run.

But something kind of wild happened on that rage run. For the first time in two months of truly torturous runs, I finally entered a flow state. A state of, “hey, maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe I could even add another half mile to this.” Then I stepped in some dog doo, and it ruined my mood all over again.

So, this is the vibe I brought to the coffee shop, where Len had no idea what he was in for.

Chapter Two: Len narrowly avoids Steph’s rage

I was in the middle of a conference call just in front of a coffee shop when I first saw Steph. She was scraping the bottom of her shoe on the grass and looking like she was having quite the morning. But, as angry as she might have seemed, I found her stunning. Hair a mess, cheeks flushed, channeling all her bad energy into getting whatever was on the bottom of her running shoes off.

I sped through the goodbyes with my colleagues and rushed inside for a plastic cup of water and a handful of napkins. By the time I came back out, Steph was luckily still there. In fact, she had taken off the soiled shoe and was sitting on the curb, still trying to scrape whatever was stuck to the bottom with a stick.

“Here,” I said, “This might work better, although it seems like you’ve got a good technique going.”

Steph stared daggers at me. I thought she was even prettier than at first sight.

“Actually,” I said, offering a hand. “Can I help? I used to run cross country in college, I’ve got plenty of experience getting dog poop out of running shoes.”

She shook her head at my offer and grabbed the water and the napkins with a mumbled “thanks.”

I wasn’t ready to give up yet.

“So, are you training for something in particular? Or just running for the fun of it?”

She laughed at that.

“I don’t know why people think this is fun,” she said sourly.

“Ah, well. Yeah, I think most of the time it’s not. But, then you get one really good run out of three or four crappy ones (excuse the pun), and it makes it worth it.”

This seemed to land, and I thought maybe I saw Steph relax just a little bit.

“Actually, I think today’s run was maybe the first good one I’ve ever had. Before this,” she waved her shoe.

“Well, that sounds like progress!”

The floodgates were open, and we chatted for the next ten minutes about her plans for Alaska, her flakey friend, and how every run still seemed to be a struggle. I asked if she wanted to come inside and talk more over coffee. But, she waved her shoe again and said that she didn’t want to ruin someone else’s day who would have to mop up after her.

I got her coffee order, came back out, and we decided to have a walk through the neighborhood.

“You don’t run anymore?” she asked me.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to get back into it,” I admitted. “But, once you get to be a little older, getting back into running seems more difficult and painful. And it’s easy to blame work. But the truth is, I miss running with other people. I never liked running alone.”

Maybe it sounded like I was trying to get an invitation, but I really wasn’t. It was just the honest truth.

“I get that,” she told me. “Would you maybe want to run together sometime next week? I have to tell you, I’m really slow.”

Chapter three: The training montage

Over the next few months, Len and I ran together twice a week, always starting and ending at the coffee shop where we met. I can’t begin to describe how helpful it was to run with him. As a former collegiate athlete, he had tips and tricks that I would never have thought of. And, he encouraged me to make little adjustments to my form and my breathing that made running almost (almost) easy.

When I told my friend Melissa about this friendly older man, turned running partner, she rolled her eyes.

“I can’t believe you’re ditching me for a sugar daddy running coach. Will he pay for our trip to Alaska, at least?” she joked.

She was playing around, but her comment kind of derailed me. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what Len’s intentions were. There was obvious chemistry between us, and hey, it’s hard to have chemistry when you’re doing something as unattractive as running. I liked him. And the sugar daddy comment didn’t come out of nowhere. Len was generous, super generous. I was kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely, he didn’t just like running with me enough to buy me new running shoes and pay for 10k races to keep my motivation up.

But running was actually becoming kind of important to me. The marathon training was my priority. And I didn’t want to complicate my life by putting a name on whatever this was. And then where would I be if things got weird or I caught feelings for this man and then we broke up?

It was easier just to keep things fun and flirty and then dip out quickly after we had our coffee and before he had a chance to kiss me.

Cut to two months before the marathon (or seven months into my training with Len), and Melissa dropped the news on me: she wasn’t going to Alaska. Sure, she had put in some training here and there, and she had signed up for the race. But she hadn’t booked a flight or responded to any of the Airbnb links I had sent her.

She said that she had been working really hard lately and her bosses had finally noticed. She was getting a promotion. That meant that she was going to be working 60-hour weeks for the foreseeable future. And hey, Melissa isn’t the villain in this story. I was happy for her that she was moving ahead in her career.

I wasn’t sure what that meant for me, though. Did I want to go to Alaska alone? Did I want to cancel? Could I even afford to go on my own? Should I take a leap of faith and invite Len? That last option felt crazy, actually. I told myself that I still had time to think about it.

Chapter Four: Steph goes to Alaska

“Let’s go together,” I interrupted before Steph even had a chance to finish her story about Melissa backing out.

She stopped running and looked hard at me.

“Don’t you think that’s kind of crazy?”

“No, I don’t. Let’s go together.” I tried to get my breathing back under control while I waited for her answer. Her hesitation made it impossible.

“Look,” I said, “We don’t have to stay together. I’ll find my own place to stay. We can hang out before or after the race, however much or little you want. And, please, don’t think that this is me trying to make my move, even though I'm sure you’ve probably suspected that I have feelings for you. But I don’t want to make this weird. I just don't want you to cancel your trip. And the idea of going and doing the race with you feels…right. I don’t know. It just feels right.”

Steph grabbed my hand and turned me around to start slowly jogging together again.

“You don’t have to book your own place, let’s find something with two rooms.”

And that’s how I weasled my way into running a marathon in Alaska with Steph two months later. I could maybe write a whole book about just that one week that we were there: the fact that she totally beat my time, the sightseeing that we did after, and the fact that, after all, we only used the one room.

But I guess I’ll just leave it here. If you see a girl in a bad mood wiping dog mess off her shoe in front of a coffee shop, buy her a coffee. It could change everything.