Almost any Sunday morning, you'll find Ruth Jackson, Arthur Garrison and their dog Tess sitting outside Hennessey's Tavern in Redondo Beach, California, drinking coffee and talking with friends after a Sunday group long run.
But the pair wasn't an obvious one. She was an off road, long distance runner. He preferred shorter races where he could test his speed. They were friends for years before they thought they'd make something more than running club teammates.
Jackson, who is from Lancashire, England, was living in London and working as a social worker. In 1995, she joined Serpentine, a Central London-based running and triathlon club. Garrison, an American who spent parts of his childhood in England and in Spain, joined in 1998 while living in London for work.
The two became friends through the group, but didn't run together because their running styles and race preferences didn't mesh.
But she convinced Garrison to join her in the Beachy Head Marathon in Eastbourne, England, one of the largest off-road marathons in the UK. She told him that it was more of a long country walk with running than a road race.
"I told him we'd stop at a pub along the way," she said.
They never got to the pub. Instead, the pair slogged through a driving rain in the bitter cold. One friend slipped and sprained his ankle. Another broke his collarbone.
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"I remember thinking 'Is that all?'" he said.
Eventually, she got the hint. The pair married in 2010 and in 2011 moved to Torrence, California, where she is a mental health counselor. Together, they are members of the Village Runner running group, and train weekly with Tess in the same town where Olympian Louis Zamperini, subject of the book and movie Unbroken, She Runs: Kara Guzman.
Jackson has finished more than 60 marathons and ultramarathons, including a few 50ks, 100ks, one 100 miler that she says accidentally turned into a 104-miler. She prefers longer races off-road. "It's nice scenery, you run with your friends, you get to see the countryside," she said.
"I think it's a personality thing," Garrison said of why Jackson's so good at ultra running. "There's proving to yourself that you can conquer everything."
For the last two and a half years, they've been using running together to help Tess, a Labrador mix they rescued from a shelter, become more social with people. She's come to trust the running group. "She's closest to them because she associates them with something fun," Jackson said.
It keeps the couple running together, too. If they start a run and then split off to do different workouts, Tess sits down and refuses to move.
"'Not without Arthur' would be the title of the biography of that dog," Garrison joked.
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