MINNEAPOLIS — Nineties and 2000s babies are bonding over an unlikely pair of life’s milestones.
“I’m officially at the age where you’re either getting married or running half marathons,” one runner posted on TikTok. Other users are sharing online and in person that they too are observing this quarter-life divergence.
Is it true?
“Yeah,” Miranda Martinez said with a laugh. “I’m not a runner, so that's why I'm getting married.”
"You’re looking for things to do in your life, so you're getting married, having kids or running a marathon," Caroline Pritchard said. "I don't want to get married. I don't want to have kids. So running is great.”
Ponytails are popular in Pritchard's social circle, as much as veils are in Martinez’s.
“All my friends have done it,” Pritchard said, explaining why she decided to start running. She took up the hobby in the last year-and-a-half, joined the Mill City run club and ran her first marathon last weekend at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon.
Martinez, who is 28 and planning to get married in January, said she was invited to roughly 10 other weddings this year.
If you dig deeper into the trend, the either/or scenario could signal what matters to young adults.
"Whether you want to get married or run a marathon, either one is great, and I think it's great women are doing what they want," Martinez said.
The trend could also signal what’s “supposed” to matter to young adults.
“I think it's because we're all in the grind culture,” Pritchard said. “Everyone's like, 'You've got to be doing something.' So if you're not getting married or having kids, you might as well be running a marathon, right?”
With either piece of hardware — a diamond ring or a post-race medal — time is a commitment.
“I’d love to run a triathlon," Martinez said. “But not this year because I've got too much with wedding planning.”
Perhaps time is what forces many to choose between a wedding and a race, one or the other.
But if you’re Avi Baron, you don't have to choose at all. Hours after completing the 10-mile race at the Twin Cities Marathon event, Baron walked down the aisle and exchanged his vows.
“It was kind of accidental that it happened on the same day, but it was an intentional decision to still do both the same day,” he said.
At the finish line, he said, "I managed to pull them both off — well, we’ll find out in a few hours."