Riff Raff: Exercise group's drill: Hard training, happy hours, then happily ever after

If Team Riff Raff adopted an official motto, it could be "Come for the workout, leave with a lifelong running partner."

Amid this pack of sweating, sneaker-clad exercisers, romance has blossomed. Often.

Two couples have married. Another is engaged. Several more are dating.

And by the time Riff Raffers Steven Hemmeline and Kelly Harris get back from sailing around the Virgin Islands, you'll be able to add another soon-to-be-wed couple to that tally.

"I bought a ring for her today and we're about to go on vacation," Hemmeline said just before departing 10 days ago.

Coach Panther Carmical never intended to turn his running group, part of Rogue Training System's lineup of programs, into a marriage incubator. "It's bizarre, and I know of no other group in which this has happened," Carmical says.

Drop in for an evening, though, and it's not difficult to figure out why. Runners love to ramble around the city under the power of two legs. Spend three or four hours a week running with someone, and you get to know the kind of life detail — from whether they lead or follow to what bugs them about their co-workers and what they ate for dinner last night — you just can't glean at a dance club.

These runners also like happy hour. And no, you don't have to drink to join Riff Raff. But it helps.

The group trains hard. Today they're ticking off 800-meter repeats on the track at Lamar Middle School. But as soon as practice is over, they'll dash off somewhere they can settle in for a few cold ones and nibble veggie burgers.

At the moment, Carmical's on the track, running alongside the 25 or so folks who have showed up for a Tuesday evening session.

"I tend to preach the philosophy of thankfulness for being able do this. It's easy to get caught up in the numbers, wanting to get faster. But ultimately, isn't every run a celebration that you can run, of being alive?" Carmical says.

The workout location changes weekly. Some sessions are on a track, others meander roads through downtown, East Austin or Northwest Hills. The evening practices always end with happy hour or dinner. "That's gospel," Carmical says.

Tonight's workout done, the athletes head out for the 2-mile jaunt to the Black Star Co-op Pub and Brewery, where Rhonda and Tim Hudgeons, who met through Carmical's training group five years ago, are already kicked back, relaxing.

"It's a social group that likes to run," says Rhonda Hudgeons, 31, who works at ACS Athletics.

"I think it's Panther's personality. He'll give you a grueling workout, but afterward, it's ‘That's done,' " says Tim Hudgeons, 35, a construction contractor.

Carmical was such a big part of the Hudgeons' love story that they enlisted him to perform their wedding ceremony. Besides being a running coach, co-owner of East End Fitness, publisher of engineering books and strength and conditioning coach for the Texas Rollergirls, he's a minister ordained through an online website.

"It kind of started with him, so it seemed appropriate," Rhonda Hudgeons says.

Carmical, 42, didn't start running himself until he was in his 30s and divorced. (He has since remarried — to a cyclist.)

"I started running to meet girls," he says.

It must have rubbed off. Either that, or Carmical's slightly goofy personality drew in droves of like-minded folks.

Unlike most running groups, Riff Raff isn't pegged on preparing for a particular race. It runs year-round, and members pay by the month. Stick around long enough and Carmical will christen you with a nickname. There's a fall formal, a red dress pub run in which everyone, male and female, runs in a red dress, plus countless breakfasts, dinners and happy hours.

"Panther, he's the Pied Piper," says Rawhide Callais (that's his real name), who met his girlfriend, Gin Johnson, at a Riff Raff post-workout happy hour.

Christy Burley, an executive assistant at a bank, had been running with Riff Raff for about a year when David Yin showed up for a workout. They started dating a few months later, after she made it clear to Yin during a pub run that she was interested romantically.

"She planted a big kiss on me," says Yin, 31, a biology teacher and cross-country coach at Austin High School.

The couple married March 12, while more than a dozen Riff Raffers looked on.

They both doubt they'd ever have met outside of Riff Raff, a hub of their social life. They recently spent four days attending South by Southwest concerts with members of the running group. Happy hours are a regular indulgence.