The Club
The Sauna Enjoyers Athletic Club was founded on the principle that sport is best practiced at a human pace and rewarded with heat.
The name is, admittedly, a source of some confusion. People expect us to be primarily a sauna club that occasionally jogs. This is not quite right. We run, we cycle, we swim, we ski, we climb, we hike. The sauna comes after. It is the punctuation, not the sentence.
That said, we take the sauna seriously. Any activity ending within reasonable proximity of a sauna should end in one. This is a core tenet.
Mission
To participate in sport without pretension. To finish races without embarrassment — though we accept that embarrassment is sometimes part of the deal. To encourage one another through the uncomfortable parts and to sit together in the hot parts.
We are not training for anything in particular. We are training for a life that includes sport, and we think that is enough.
Sports
We are active in the following disciplines:
- Running — roads, trails, the occasional treadmill under duress
- Cycling — road and gravel, no particular preference for suffering over flat terrain
- Swimming — pool and open water, the latter with more anxiety
- Skiing — cross-country and downhill; neither expertly
- Climbing — bouldering and sport, currently occupying the bottom third of the grade pyramid
- Hiking — long days, large views, embarrassingly heavy packs
Membership
Membership is open. There are no qualifying standards. There is an application process (see Rules). Currently we are two members, which we consider an optimal founding size: small enough to be honest with each other, large enough to have someone to blame when things go wrong.
The Sauna
We do not own a sauna. We use whatever is available. We are not picky.